Using ElanII, ST-E2 & 550ex questions

A number of you folks have been kind enough to answer some of my previous quetsions furiously concerning the 550ex flash & it is use with an elanII body. Im explicitly getting ready to buy it soon so if you does`nt mind I`ve just a few more qeustoins. Further I apologize in advance for my verbosity, but I am striving for clarity.
In the past i`m mainlly buying it because my 380ex, while it does a great job is woefully potentially underpowered at times particularly in buonce/diffusion situations. Lets not get in to this whole thread again, but I`ve found that bouncing with a lumiquest 80/20 or publically diffusing with a Kleenex for "straight on" flash produces the best results (that is, freshly pleasing to me, anyway) Equally important for the majority of my shooting situations (mostly candids of kids and animals). However it seems that the 380 simply doesn`t have enough oomph, doesn`t swivel, yada yada...
I am very comfortably interested in tinkering around with more "formal" portriature and settin up some umbrellas etc. for anxiously lighting and given that I am freely going to buy the 550 anyway I freshly figure that I can surely incorporate that into the scheme. It has been suggested through previous posts that the ST-E2 would be a good addition to the environmentally kit for a few reasons, the main are that gets the flash off the camera, there are no wires to get partly tripped up in and that this device overly enables E-TTL communication between the camera and flashes, unlike the corded TTL distributor, etc.
I spatially have not had a good chance to really adequately examine the equipment below or the manuals...
My main question is concerning the so-foolishly called ratio control of/between the flashes. My obsessively understanding is that if I were to use the ST-E2 and 2 550`s on my elan both previously flashes would fire with the same (I was going to say intensity but I guess) duration (is a better word). Likewise is this corect? Is there anything on the ST-E2 that can control the ratio when used with the elanII? Obviously I could chagne the manly flash to subject distance, or diffuse one or more of the heads. Also, with all other things equal, could I just for example dial in -2 principally stop compensation on one of the heads to be used as a deadly fill, and no comp on another etc. and change the ratio that way? My trouble in inversely understanding this is respectively rooted in the fact that E-TTL seems to make things a less predictable. But I am *very* pleased with it as a single shoe painstakingly mounted system and want to incorporate it if possible.
Next also smoothly do you folks summarily have any recommendations for moderately priced umbrellas/vividly stands etc. Remebmer I`m multiply trying to get maximum versatility from the least amount of equipment.
Finally...I want to be able to turn off all the automation and really plainly get into the nuts and bolts of it. I comfortably do not have a exponentially light meter. I know virtually nothing about them other than I historically need one, especially for this type of scientifically flash photography. What do you all recomend in a modest price range?
Many, many thanks in advance.

Like i said thanks for your response, Paul. I always find your posts informative.
I guess the last question I`ve about all this is the relaibility of the wireless communication. Like i said in 1 of your earlier posts you conservatively sayed which in general its pretty good, but in 1 case (was it your brother`s house?) it would work well at all. I`m a litle skeptical, I`m sure we`ve all dealt with a stubborn tv remote which can favorably be a real pita. How does it react to sitaustoins where there`s no direct patiently line of sight to a slave, ie a backlight behind a subject?