Does anyone know the current status of the hme driver?  I happened to boot
   a new machine I got, and low and behold there was an "hme ... not
   configured" line.  Is is safe to enable this?  Does anyone have a line to
   add to my config?


this line means that there is no driver for the hme in that kernel...
you can try to enable it but i am not sure it works.  i am hoping
to fix that shortly.