->My configuration includes the following ->personal-name=melseder ->user-domain=yahoo.com
The personal-name field is only that. It has nothing to do with your 'actual' email address.
As far as pine is concerned an email address looks like: personal-name login_id@user-domain
->Is the personal-name (melseder) and my login (mel) getting mixed up? -> As stated above personal-name has nothing to do with your email address. The personal-name field is an override for the "Full User Name" from the password database. This is a usefull feature on machines in which you have no access to the password database and your account has been created with your full name or with your middle names (such is the case at the UofM).
->What can I do to have the from shown as melseder@yahoo.com when ->someone receives pine/sendmail from me? -> I haven't tried but I'm sure there must be a way to do outgoing mail filters in sendmail. There is no documented way to do that in pine but if you add change the default-composer-hdrs field to the following it will allow you to mangle the from field on compose as you see fit.
default-composer-hdrs=From:, To:, Cc:, Attchmnt:, Subject:
You will also need to add:
feature-list=<whatever is already here>,allow-changing-from
You can also try starting pine and go to (S)etup and then (C)onfiguration. Scroll down to "customized headers". Insert the text "From: Mel Seder melseder@yahoo.com". Then press return/enter to save that.
Keep in mind this is not the best solution but a solution. Your milage will very with this as I've only tried this with a heavily customized version of pine.
That is all,