"Someone will say "so connect pull up/down resistor"

Forget someone - have you read the document AN461 ( dated 2003 Apr 30 ) from Philips ? Page 6) of the document has a good flowchart that explains the whole thing clearly.

The next important thing to understand is to use a supervisor IC for reset ( like DS1232 ) instead of the normal RC reset.

Come back if you need more help.

Raghu