Oh wow, you're welcome!
New Years... yeah... should we be happy because of getting a new year? Or sad because of losing the old one...
Alrighty... I'll try and explain rep.
When you start here, you have no rep. If someone likes or dislikes you, you gain rep or nega-rep. Nega-rep's bad I should add. Anyways... once you have rep, your "rep power" is dictated by how many people have repped you (for each 100 it rises by 1) and how long you've been on the site. (Each year raises the number)
Your rep power dictated hos much rep you give to any given person when repping them, which affects their own rep power. It also effects nega-rep, but I can't recall how at the moment. As for points, if someone has X amount of power, you get X amount of points when they rep you. So if you've got 16, that means the people who have repped you have given you 16 rep points in total.
I read that somewhere a while ago, but typically rep is just ignored... and I might have gotten a point or two wrong... If you still need to know anything, you could always try the FAQ though... I think there's a section devoted to rep...