Upgrading Drupal

Hi,
I upgraded my site to D7 recently. I was using the module simplenews in the D6 site. I got its D7 equivalent and installed it. But to my surprise i was not able to find the subscription block in my newsletter registration page. Two text fields of name and email should appear with subscribe and unsubscribe radio buttons and a save button.
But now i am not seeing it any more. I was also usinf simplenews-Realname which is not there in D7. i am kind of stuck as this is the last module to get my site functioning in D7. Can anyone help me out here.

After upgrading from D6 to D7 has encountered an error. The following error message provided by the website: "Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 11 of 14 bytes in variable_initialize() (line 943 of /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/sledehund/includes/bootstrap.inc)."

Why is IRC so difficult for FreeNode.net? I just want to chat with other Drupal developers. I follow the IRC instruction and they recommend Miranda for IRC. So, I setup for server irc.freenode.net and all I get is that I must authenticate via SASL. Well, that is no where in the Drupal IRC instructions. Every search for SASL setup leads me to http://freenode.net, but that always returns an Error 504.

The following error appears on any page using the geolocator module.

    Warning: file_put_contents(temporary://fileDOaVA5): failed to open stream: "DrupalTemporaryStreamWrapper::stream_open" call failed in file_unmanaged_save_data() (line 1900 of /hermes/waloraweb006/b1478/moo.laarrl/drupal/includes/file.inc).
    The file could not be created.

Also there is an error when attempting any module install:


Warning: file_put_contents(temporary://filekFYlkz): failed to open stream: "DrupalTemporaryStreamWrapper::stream_open" call failed in file_unmanaged_save_data() (line 1900 of /hermes/waloraweb006/b1478/moo.laarrl/drupal/includes/file.inc).
The file could not be created.
Warning: fileowner(): stat failed for temporary://update_Sjm1gB in update_manager_local_transfers_allowed() (line 932 of /hermes/waloraweb006/b1478/moo.laarrl/drupal/modules/update/update.manager.inc).
Warning: move_uploaded_file(temporary://feeds-7.x-2.0-alpha6.tar.gz): failed to open stream: "DrupalTemporaryStreamWrapper::stream_open" call failed in drupal_move_uploaded_file() (line 1601 of /hermes/waloraweb006/b1478/moo.laarrl/drupal/includes/file.inc).
Warning: move_uploaded_file(): Unable to move '/tmp/phpIJiDz6' to 'temporary://feeds-7.x-2.0-alpha6.tar.gz' in drupal_move_uploaded_file() (line 1601 of /hermes/waloraweb006/b1478/moo.laarrl/drupal/includes/file.inc).

I've received the upgrade/patch notice. And I'm going to go through this, I just don't want to take my site down. This has happened to me before. I think the unclear part within the upgrade.txt file is identifying the "core files" within the current Drupal install. These are the files to be deleted, and then upgraded. But it doesn't identify which files are "core files". Can I just go by the names of the files and folders within the upgrade (7.16) patch tar file (except the "sites" folder)? Then find the equivelents within my current install and delete those?

minor updating from 7.15 ---> 7.16 do you leave both profiles and sites folder untouched? It's not clear to me which are the "core" files and folders to be replaced.
Also, when they talk about drupal "instances" they mean there can be more than one, how does that occur?