I finally put the final touches on my computer setup in this apartment. The Linux Box (my old laptop attached to a wall mounted flat panel in the living room) is now hardwired to the rest of the network... I am not a particularly big fan of wi-fi and since I already had a RJ-45 running out to the living room, I just daisy-chained another one with a cheapo switch from Comp-USA.
The final integrating step for the setup was activating the ssh server on the linux box and installing X-Win 32 on the beast (desktop) so that I can run and control everything from my bedroom/ desktop. For anyone who has never used an X windows emulator before, they are much easier to use now then they were even a couple of years ago. There is no more setting DISPLAY variable and crap like that... X-Win automatically does that, and it is integrated with PuTTy, which is convenient.