Tony,
First let me say thank you, it is very encouraging having your help during this process.
I am developing a new module, for a drop down menu system. This module is only affecting the admin side at the moment. I have a root level menu, with sub-menu items. Similar to categories and subcategories but less complicated. I need to know how to query the database, and retrieve the name of the root level category based on its id. Simple, I know!
Here is a brief video outlining the challenge:
http://youtu.be/fUN8WpSHnE4
Module is attached, I renamed the tar file to zip so it would upload. Thanks in advance Tony, I hope to hear from you soon.