Column types reported from SQL Server 1008

I have test table 'basetest' in SQLExpress 2008 that has a variety of
columns for test purposes. I created it in MS Server Management Studio.

I have 2 columns that the SMS shows as bigint, a time(7) column, and a
date column among others.

I created a single row using SMS.

I connect to the server, and use SQLExecuteDirect to do "select * from
dbo.basetest". Then using the same statement handle, I call
SQLDescribeCol() and SQLColAttribute() for SQL_DESC_TYPE_NAME.

The type for the bigint columns comes back as 8 (SQL_DOUBLE), and the
type name correspondingly as 'float'. The time and date columns are
reported as 12 (SQL_VARCHAR) and 'varchar'.

All the other reported types and names make sense.

My freetds.conf file has the protocol version as 8.0.

What am I missing?

Steve