Are there anything like this held on Wednesdays or Sundays?  With my job,
those are generally the only two days I have free.  The days I work, it's
generally from around 8am to 9pm or so (gotta love that paycheck tho :D)

I'm not a first time user of Linux, but my installs are usually week long
affairs, and it would nice to be able to get a semi-working machine in one
evening.  My latest run at it will be to set up a file and web server out of
an old Thinkpad R40.  Yeah, I know, laptops make terrible servers, but it's
a machine that would be sitting idle otherwise.  The only catch - something
died in the power supply, no longer supplying power to the backlight.