here's a new one, this time I got a window that said AFP Connection Status and "looking up <ip address of server>" and a beach ball in the Finder, I waited a bit, then cancelled the AFP window, Finder never came back though, actually it did after a force quit (usually have to reboot).
I pinged the IP address from above, good.
I used connect to server from the Finder did smb and it said user name password bad, but I never got a chance to put those in.
I tried AFP and after it tried for a while I got "connection failed, the server may not exist or it is not operational at this time, check the server name or IP address and try again"
hmmmmm
I told IT about it but I won't hold my breath since they don't care much about me and my Mac.