I did try changeing the 127 ip to the localhost in that file during those attempts and it didn't help any.  I have gotten itt o connect to other people's clients but its just not much fun when you don't have complete control :(
I am gonna try shawns idea see if that helps any.  I do have that running when I try this though
EDIT:
What do I need to fill in?
What is someid@localhost and what is somepass is that my username and password?  like if the username was bigbob and pass was pop  would it say
mysql>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON eq.* TO bigpbob@localhost 
IDENTIFIED BY 'pop' WITH GRANT OPTION; 
or, the less secure but more useful technique that will allow you to log on with that user name from any machine. 
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON eq.* TO someid@"%" 
IDENTIFIED BY 'somepass' WITH GRANT OPTION;