The test of your understanding of any new technology is quite simple. Can you use it at 1am after giving up sleeping thanks to the new fuckhead neighbours?
And after just converting a simple authentication function from VB.NET to C#, and implementing SQL based login/password access (using a stored procedure) into the ASP.NET version of Merauderweb, I'm able to say that yes, I "get it". Yay me. I started off with this article, which is pretty nice and simple to understand - but I've never liked the fact that a lot of these examples place too much code in the ASPX file (ie, the stuff in Section 3). So I wanted to convert it to C# and place the code in the .CS file. Anyway, I realise it's a pretty simple task, but the trick was to do it while needing some serious sleep and while in a completely foul mood.. not ideal thinking situations really..