Basically the whole day was spent tweaking the Linux install. Also did some reading up on backup mechanisms (I'm considering using Bacula). At the moment I'm working on the OOo install. I guess no-one has created a .emerge because the process is so simple:

emerge rpm
<download the binary distribution>
tar -xvf OOo_1.9.m79_native_LinuxIntel_install.tar
rm RPMS/openofficeorg-redhat-menus-1.9.79-1.noarch.rpm
rm RPMS/openofficeorg-suse-menus-1.9.79-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -i --nodeps RPMS/*

Then create start menu items for /opt/openoffice.org1.9.79/program/simpress
and /opt/openoffice.org1.9.79/program/swriter. And make associations such that odt files get loaded by OOo.

That takes a while (emerging rpm, mostly), but takes little effort to accomplish. On the other hand, looking up what to do to make that into a proper emerge is going to take a seriously non-zero amount of time. So, having solved the problem for my machine I guess I'm going to punt like everyone else.

Oh, by-the-by, Rosey seemed pretty nonplussed by the need to remember the 40-character filenames for viewing recorded programs from Myth. Would really like to make that easier for her... maybe I'll hack something together that creates show-named symlinks for each nvu file.