Sudo for dummies?

[Joe]

Hi.  I have a few priviledged commands I would like to be able to run as 
a user without using su.
For the most part, I could put them all (or symlinks to them) in one 
protected directory.

I just read the man pages for sudo, sudoers, visudo and got overwhelmed 
by all the options.

My machine is basically single user (me and root) and is relatively 
physically secure.  I'm still running Mandrake 9.1.

Can someone show me how to set sudo up  in a minimal fashion?
It looks like it's not that complicated once you narrow it down to just 
a few things to do.

TIA

Joe

-- 
"If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they're capable of becoming." -- Goethe