Hey y'all,

I'm very new to Linux, though I really like it so far. I'm just learning to use the command prompt and I've been having a hell of a time trying to get TOR to work properly on my laptop. I have a wired ethernet internet connection and everything seems fine with that. Now, I'm a little concerned with anonymity and I've read that TOR is my best bet for staying anonymous. I tried installing TOR via command line and everything seemed to go ok. I also installed Vidalia.
Now, when I try to start TOR I get the following error:
Sep 17 12:01:37.483 [Notice] Tor v0.2.3.4-alpha (git-9986082fc4414b7d). This is experimental software. Do not rely on it for strong anonymity. (Running on Linux x86_64)
Sep 17 12:01:37.494 [Notice] Read configuration file "/home/sean/.vidalia/torrc".
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Notice] Initialized libevent version 1.4.13-stable using method epoll. Good.
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Warning] Could not bind to 127.0.0.1:9050: Address already in use. Is Tor already running?
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Notice] Closing partially-constructed listener Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Warning] Failed to parse/validate config: Failed to bind one of the listener ports.
Sep 17 12:01:37.495 [Error] Reading config failed--see warnings above.
What gives? I've tried googling this and it seems others have had the same problem. But, I can't seem to get it to work. If I kill TOR and allow Vidalia to restart it, I can sometimes get the little onion to turn green, but when I got to the TOR checker website it still says that I'm not using TOR.

Anyone?