yum >always< hangs...

[Christopher J. Bottaro]

Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 2 - i386 - Base
Server: Dag APT Repository
Server: Dries APT/YUM Repository
Server: Fedora.us Extras (Stable)
Server: Fedora.us Extras (Testing)
Server: Fedora.us Extras (Unstable)
Server: Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
Server: Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (testing)

then it just sit there.  sometimes it makes it a bit futher, but still
hangs.  in my yum.conf, i have retries set to 0 (i used to have it set to
1) and am using the yum.conf from fedorafaq.org.

any ideas?  yum is a good idea, but its turning out to be completely
useless.

thanks for the help.