Since the FreeBSD experiment didn't work out1, I picked a different one: "plain old" Debian2! (should be acronymized to POD).
I read an old piece of evangelism3 which gave me the idea to version-control /etc, though I have sinced found etckeeper to do the same4
$ sudo apt-get install etckeeper
# Modify VCS to `git` (not necessary on Debian, AFAICS)
$ sudo vi /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf
$ cd /etc
$ sudo git log
# Should show "...blah blah blah ... Initial Commit"
# On Ubuntu, might need to explicitly run `sudo git commit -a -m 'Initial commit`
# Fully integrated with APT
$ sudo git log
# will show something like "... committing changes in /etc after apt run ..."
Other than that, not much else. Busy with a new baby daughter (!)5, trying to read less "news and blogs"6, pretending to read a book on NLP7, and having a "brand new linux box" experience with a VM in Google Cloud.
Have a happy new year, everyone.