I live in another part of the United States and so I wouldn't have been 
able to be there, but I have a couple questions about the kernel that I 
have been itching to figure out and was wondering if anyone could help 
enlighten me :)

First, how exactly does the kernel uncompress itself?  Are there a few 
lines of code at the beginning of the binary that instruct the computer 
on how to uncompress the rest?  What program handles the compression 
during compilation and what sort of algorithm is used?  Gzip maybe?

lol I'm hoping SOMEONE can help me out with this.  I haven't found much 
googling, partly because I'm not sure exactly under what terms I should 
search for, and also, I've posted similiar questions to a couple other 
user groups in my area, and no one seems to have an answer.

James