okay... I think I now have figured out why the system refuses to install amd64 packages, perferring the i386 packages: it still thinks it's an i386 system. So, I spent about 3 hours hunting down where I could change what the system thinks of itself, and found nothing. Basically, I need to change the system such that it will install the amd64 packages instead of the i386 ones (all the errors were apparently b/c the amd64 mirrors didn't have a package list for i386 packages, which was what apt and kynaptic and kpackage were all looking for (I think through dpackage, but I'm still not sure...))
So, does anyone know what to do? I'm pretty much stumped myself, so any input, even a pointer to a file I should su root / nano would be great. Thanks for listening to my pathetic newbie problems, and have a great day!