[Aaron]

In another post you said there are .htaccess files installed by Connections (below). My installation has no .htaccess files in the connections folder.

Hopes this helps somewhat. :-)
a

From post “What changes is the plugin making to .htaccess during activation?”

Your reply:
Connections only writes two .htaccess files, both of which only it its custom/private folders.

The first is here:
../wp-content/connections_templates/

It adds a .htaccess to prevent browsing the templates directly.

The second is here:
../wp-content/plugins/connections/includes/timthumb/

There are a couple rules in place to help make sure the timthumb script can be run directly.