You know that you're addicted when...

The first thing you do after emptying a cup of coffee into your laptop is getting the internet connection of the Old Desktop to work, so you can tell everybody about it.

*hugs backups closely and hopes against hope The Toy will simply dry out*

It's working again!

Following my fathers advice I put the Toy into the oven for a few hours. And now it's working just fine. (ETA: Ok, make that nearly fine. But I can live with random blackouts of the screen - which were most likely caused by taking the thing apart and loosening a cable)
*huge sigh of relief*

Advantages of a father whose work includes selling computers: He told me he would send me one of his old laptops if this would not work. Or, as he told me after I called to tell him the Toy was working again, a new HP one.
My family is crazy. They are wonderful, but completely crazy.

Positve effect of today? I learned enough about linux to get my internet connection working and install a few essential things.