DWR,
What you have are fungus/soil nats. They are pesky, but from my experiance, they do no damage to the plant. If you want to get rid of them you can do a couple of things. 1) You can try pesticides (wouldn't recommend it); 2) try the vinigar thing; 3) you can hang "sticky" paper in your area; 4) or you can put a thick layer of playbox sand ontop of your soil.
Hope you get the problem solved.