Setting up wireless home network question

[B]

Hello there,
I've never set up a network before. I'm not even sure if this will be a network. We just want to share the internet connection, no files. I would appreciate any suggestions you might have. So here it goes:
I live with a roommate, he has cable in his office (extra room in the apt). I have a wireless card. I want to put a 4-port wireless router in the office. Meaning, The router is plugged in the cable box. His ethernet cable is blugged in the router. I get the wireless signal in my room.
I am wondering if there is a way I could set this up without using his computer from my laptop.Has anyone done this before?
Also, how do I find the "MAC Address" ? Is this the IP address of my roommate? or is this specific to my laptop?
I would also appreciate any websites you know of. I have to do this myself since my roommate is even worse when it comes to computers, please help?

[Expunge]

You don't need his computer to do this. I'm guesing you need the mac address of the router or the cable modem, in either case that should be location on the unit, tiny print not easy to see. You will need to have a cable to plug your laptop in the router to set it up. once set up you won't need the cable.

I have a wireless at home, router is hooked to the cable modem, and the laptop has built in wireless. If you can't find a signal wirelessly you may need to change the channel up or down before it finds the signal this usually requires plugging the laptop into the router again.

[B]

Ok, I think I might be able to pull this off.. Do you think this would work:

-disconnect his ethernet cable from the cable modem.
-plug the router in the cable modem.
-plug my laptop in one of the LAN ports on the router.
-follow the instructions on the router's booklet. (this includes "cloning the MAC address")
-disconnect my laptop, plug in his desktop.
-come back to my room, put the wireless card in.
-see if I can go online.

[Expunge]

If everything goes right it should. I would suggest broadcasting the signal and no encryption at first till you make sure you get a connection. Then you can turn off the broadcast and turn on the encryption.

[Lucy]

I agree - start by turning off most the network security devices, and make sure everything can talk to everything else. (Leave the firewall, but remove encryption, and all the stuff that stops some random passerby from using your signal.) Then add back in the security, one piece at a time. This wya you know which problem you are attacking at any moment.

There was a magic number that we needed on each wireless card. That got tricky. Some wireless cards had it printed in tiny type. Others had it printed, but in the wrong number system for the computer we needed to enter it into. (Decimal vs. hex or something - I'm hazy on the details.) I think we needed to use software to query one device for its magic number - that required a call to customer support somewhere to figure out. But all this was because we wanted to set up a closed network (tell the router to only talk to known devices). When we set it up initially as an open network, it only took a little fiddling to make it work.