wireless connection issues

[DaciSS]

Edit--
After looking at the ping output again, I realized that the ip address saying the gateway was unreachable was actually the eth0 ip address. Switching over from Windows I was assuming that if an ethernet cable was not attached the OS would not attempt to use the ethernet port. Once I entered ifconfig eth0 down, I was finally able to connect to the internet with the wireless adapter.

Why public access points didn't give me this problem is strange, but I'll tackle that another day.

Probably you were using static IP on the ethernet interface and default gateway was set on it. Disconnecting the cable doesn't disable the interface automatically.
You need to verify which interface is the default gw (0.0.0.0) with "route -n"