WG511T with Debian 'Etch' 4.0r4

Been working with my wireless on my Lenovo R40 and had some trouble with the wireless connection.
Let me first start off by saying I had it working with Kubuntu and it worked great. I then decided to move over to Debian and that is when I encountered some trouble. I have a Netgear WG511T and I was able to hit my wireles connection but only for a few days. Then I was never able to link to it again for some reason. One thing I did notice is that the nm-applet never showed in the systray even though I had gnome network manager installed. I compiled the code for my wireless card from madwifi using module assistant and didnt encounter any trouble. When I enter dmesg at the shell, I was able to see the Atheros chipset fine but for some reason I cant hit wireless anymore. Anyone have any ideas? I am slowly trying to migrate away from the Windows world but its one step at a time.