It's taken over 2 days, required the stripping down to chassis of two old PCs, and needed about 25 install attempts to get everything working, but I finally have my own fully functional Debian Linux machine.
And in all honesty, I had more fun doing it than I've had in the last year of using Win2K (which I do actually like as an OS, but it just doesn't give you anything to do). I always assumed that overexposure was to blame for my declining enthusiasm for computing lately. Maybe it was just Microsoft.
You go linuxhacker! :)