In my last post I mentioned that I needed to install a non standard package to get my laptop wireless device working. Well, I decided that because it took me about 20-25 minutes to find the fix for this I would post it so I can save someone some unneeded grief.
To get the wireless hardware working with the OS most people recommend NDISWrappers but the easiest and most supported was is to use Synaptic (the package manager) to install bcm43xx-fwcutter which is nothing more than the firmware that the kernel needs to load during the boot process to make the Wireless NIC usable. After installation just reboot and the viola you have a working Broadcom wireless NIC which supports pretty much any encryption method available.