<td style="padding: 10"> screwed up the cell in my table! putting it at ten or 100 puts the nexts right over the right-hand side, i found that the bigger the number, the smaller the padding, why? I don't want thousands of 0s in my html!

Heres the URL:
http://www.geocities.com/headlessgrimreaper/home.html

I feel like a fool now! The cell didn't have a width so it was set right over to the right, now I've fixed it with a set width (notice the table has colspan!).

Not too sure on what width you are referring to, but looking at your first post, you are missing the measurement type and trailing semicolon...

Example...

<td style="padding: 10px;">