I'm glad you guys are being civil about all this.

Smokin, if I can give you some constructive criticism, it is also entirely possible that someone might misunderstand your posts because of the lack of punctuation in them.
You're talking about something really technical, so it's even MORE important to use excellent grammar and punctuation, and really spell it out for the rest of us who might not instinctively know what you are talking about.

I've never seen a residential panel with ground and neutral connected either btw... and I've been around construction my whole life too. As far as my understanding of electricity goes, that doesn't even make sense! In fact I am thinking that it defeats the entire idea of having a ground at all. But what do I know...