Jamis,

good news 
this works
below code will put a file on the remote system
and it will get a file from the remote syste
thank you

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#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'net/ssh'
require 'net/ssh/sftp/attrs'
require 'net/ssh/sftp/constants'
require 'net/ssh/sftp/session'
require 'net/ssh/transport/buffer'
require 'net/ssh/sftp/simple'

Net::SSH::SFTP::Simple.new( "www.foobar.com", "foo", "password" ) do
|sftp| 
         status, files = sftp.list_dir( "/FOO/tester" )
         status, body = sftp.get_file( "/FOO/tester/alpha", "alpha" )
end

Net::SSH::SFTP::Simple.new("www.foobar.com", "foobar", "password") do
|sftp|
	status, files = sftp.list_dir( "/FOO/tester" )
	status, body = sftp.put_file( "ALPHA.TXT", "/FOO/tester/tango" )
end

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