As I've worked on this project I've fired some ideas back and forth with the very savvy crew at Flad.com in a SILC chat room. They've been stunningly helpful and donated to me some spare equipment and their electrical skills as well. Some subtle issues would not have been solved without their ideas.
Heck, they even came up with a good box to ship this cluster to SC09.
So here's a very thankful shout to: evolo, celt, syntaxian, and lemonlime.
Beer's on me next outing.