Hello Exchange Experts!

I have over 100 queues with SMTP Connector Entries for outgoing mail that is not making it to their intended recipients.  I have had some problems with my DNS records and understanding how DNS works with my external webhosting company and also my Internet Provider.  I hope I have those correctly set now, but with the lag in DNS records being refreshed and then Email servers recognizing the changes I am frustrated to say the least waiting to see if my email problems will clear up.

At this point I can not send out email from a user on my Exchange server to any of the addresses I can query on – yahoo.com, gmail.com, Comcast.net or charter.net.  They all sit waiting on the remote server to respond. 

So two questions –

1. How do I clear up these SMTP connector entries?  Being an old school mainframer, I am used to getting error messages, being able to look them up to find the root cause and having tools I can run to tell what is going on.  If they are available for Exchange they are pretty well hidden.  The closest I can find is the Troubleshooting Assistant, but in my case it is not giving me back anything I can use.  On my last pass it told me that it had a fatal error accessing active directory.
   1. The two corrections listed were to try connecting to exchange server analyzer without specifying a domain controller.  I don’t see where the tool ever asks for a domain controller.  Under advanced login options I could specify a domain, but I don’t use the advanced login, the id I am logged on with is as high up in our Active Directory as you can get.  I specify an Exchange Server name and a Global Catalog Server Name.  It won’t run without these.
   2. The other possible solution says to specify a domain controller that is running and is available to you.  I only have 1 domain controller, it is running, and it is available to me.  I checked Active Directory on it and it is working.  I have accessed the Exchange portions of the Active Directory Users on the same server, which is my exchange server that I am running my test on.  I have tried to reboot both servers -  AAARGGH – Nothing changed, the same results.  
   3. Regardless of this lame solution, I have reason to believe my outgoing email is not making it to their intended SMTP connectors because the DNS MX record at the site hosting my domain was pointing to mail.thompsonig.com instead of exchangesrvr.thompsonig.com.  The email going out was coming from exchangesrvr.thompsonig.com, but when the servers to a DNS lookup on thompsonig.com, it was finding mail.thompsonig.com.  exchangesrvr.thompsonig.com would match the *.thompsonig.com A record that pointed to the web hosting IP address and not the ip address for my Exchange Server.  So now that this is fixed – how do I get my outgoing email moving again and this stuff cleaned up 

2. Second, is there a way I can test DNS and Email changes without having to wait 24 to 48 hours?  This is an eternity when you have the whole company breathing down your back.

My domain is thompsonig.com.  my ip address for my email server should be 67.108.89.73.  my Exchange server FQDN is exchangesrvr.thompsonig.com.

Any and all advice is appreciated.  Sorry for the long winded email, it is late.