Getting rid of the penguin

["Randy W. Sims" <RandyS@ThePierianSpring.org>]

I've installed Debian 3r1 on my Toshiba Satellite 2655XDVD laptop. When 
booting there is a picture of tux in upper left corner that remains 
throughout the boot and login. 'clear' makes it go away. But, linux is 
confused about the size of the screen; If I pull up a manpage, it 
displays fine until I page forward when about the top 5 lines remain at 
the top of the screen, and things get worse when I page backwards.

How can I correct this?

Thanks,
Randy.