Hi Chris,

re:
> is there a script somewhere that enables me to select a face on a mesh, fire the script and the
> script selects all faces that are joined to the selected face?

If you want to select just the immediately neighboring joined faces, there is a script here for that:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6988.4

If you want to get all of the faces then the regular built in "Select All" Ctrl+A (on Mac Cmd+A) will do that.

- Michael