Well, that went about as well as could be expected.

Got the whizzy hardware actually working this afternoon; set it up, configured it, and it's now sitting here blinking its little lights at me, having relieved a more serious box of the duty of mediating between the rest of the machines in my flat and the outside world.

It slightly worries me that I now own five computers. Admittedly one is long-term inactive owing to me having (a) no space to plug it in and (b) no idea what I'd do with it if I did; but four is still mildly silly...

Also I've taken the top cover of the thing out to the shed and spray-painted over the ghastly pale green colour scheme in nice thick dark grey. Perhaps not the most imaginative of colours, but if it's going to be named after an Imperial Star Destroyer then you can't go wrong with a good businesslike military grey, I reckon. Amazingly the spray-painting appears to have gone reasonably well, which slightly surprised me because I was fully expecting to make a horrid mess of it. Woo.

Now all I have to do is work out which party I'm going to tonight, or better still find a way to make it to both. Hmmm.