My problem was that I couldn't see the linkstation at all. So when I tried to flash, it had nothing to flash.
I did happen to figure it out on my own (after a hundred scans of the forum).
What I did was to do a reset to the linkstation (press the reset while turning it on).
Then I hard coded the IP address on my machine to 192.168.11.10.
Then I was able to update the firmware.
But.... Then it came up in Japanese, so I browsed to 192.168.11.150 which gave me the menu and clicked around until I found something that looked like the language and was able to change it back to english.
It would be nice to write up a new "sticky post" that would give the procedure (with pics) to be able to do this in case of a total crash (it was a combination of posts and trial and error that lead me to a solution).
Thanks for the help though. I now have a post about using the PS3 as a media server (added to the existing one requesting info).