newbie credit balance confusion

[Sylvus Tarn]

I love Gnucash's double entry setup, but it has been a very long time
since that semester of accounting, and in the meantime I've no doubt
picked up a lot of bad Quicken habits.  My question has do with what
my accounting text calls ``normal balances'': i.e. assets and expenses
increase on the debit side;  income and liabilities on the credit.  

I'm using the 1.4 version (1.6 hasn't gotten successfully installed
yet).  As I understand it a gross paycheck is income from which I
split off net income (DR to checking account, an asset), expenses (DR
to the appropriate accounts, such as health insurance, and taxes) and
other assets (DR to the appropriate accounts such as 401k).

So far so good.  By turning off the reversed-balance account types in
settings/preferences, I was able to get normal (that is positive)
balances for my expenses, which are increasing as they should on the
debit side.  The checking account increases (debits) when net pay is
deposited, and decreases when I write checks (various expense accounts
are credited.)  I notice when doing splits that all the splits and the
total thereof stay on the same side (credit, in the case of say, a
credit card charge for a meijers' shifty takers split amongst
household and groceries).

However, then the (gross) paycheck (an income account) has a negative
balance!  The net still debits the checking account properly, as do
the expenses, but income accounts are supposed to increase on the
*credit* side, right?  And the splits and total stay on the same (credit)
side, yes?  I can fix this by defaulting in the reversed-balance
account types, but then all my expense accounts become negative!

Come to think of it, the Discover account (a liability, which should
thus increase on the credit side) is also screwed up, because I've
only started using Gnucash a few days ago, and I've only had time to
enter the payments, and very few of the purchases---thus that account
*should* show a negative balance; and it doesn't.

What am I doing wrong?

It's very disconcerting to see all these negative numbers.

I do apologize if this is obvious to everyone else.

sincerely, 

sylvus tarn