errr, scratch that previous post... i figured it out

after further review, it turns out in order to have your picture in your profile, you have to link to a url, i.e. you have to find some place to store your picture on the web. since the only server space i have access to is through my alma mater - the graduate school of library and information science at the university of illinois - i logged into my account there, uploaded my picture, copied the resulting page's url, returned to edit my profile and pasted the url into the appropriate box.

bingo.

so, i guess 'hello by picasa' doesn't suck that bad.