I am almost to the point of saying "screw it" and rebuilding the entire Gentoo install. At the least it will give me a chance to practice my backup/restore skills under Linux. So I am currently downloading the CD images for both the generic i686 and the Athlon64 versions.

I figure I'll try the Athlon64 version just to be able to say I've tried it. From what I can see it will be much easier to go with the i686 eventually (the Athlon64 port is apparently focusing primarily on server applications, while I'm looking to build a desktop), and I want it anyway for the other machine, but after all, I paid three or four hundred dollars for the privilege of having a 64-bit processor, would like to be able to say I have run it in 64-bit mode at least once :) .

I'm using the BitTorrent downloads, even though they are slightly slower than the direct FTP downloads (I'm the only person downloading the files, so there's no particular advantage to the BitTorrent approach) just to support the idea of using BitTorrent as a primary distribution channel.

Tim is coming by tomorrow to review the MediaCorp code base, though I'm going to have to cut out early to get set up for the party.