sarge... dont be discouraged; it is a steep learning curve but your model looks good. Maybe you could try rendering it and posting it (as a jpeg ) on the here... you'll get many more responses that way.

As for the pink dots... these are one of the display options when you are in component mode. By default, in polygon component mode you can select faces, edges, vertices (the pink dots), and vertex faces. You can switch back to object mode by pressing F8. This will allow you to select and manipulate the entire mesh as a single entity.

Keep it up and let's see some renders...