that's a big help callmeed, just the sort of thing i was looking for. thank-you very much. not being sure what search terms i should use, i was coming up with a lot results for "domaining" frustratingly. the registrar i am using is joker.com.
For example, most of my domains are registered through Hostway or GoDaddy, but I do most DNS management through Slicehost or Rackspace.