Nice story, and the new case looks cool. Will get one. Just wanted to chime in that I've been hacking a bit with the r-pi again the last few weekends and that the recent Raspbian distro is really quite polished, especially compared to where we came from back in 2012.

Had some sensor/gpio fun (1-wire temperature probe, http post to web, SQLite and some Google Charts), with a random wifi dongle, working quite nicely straight from the box. Same with another pi (classic model b), 1usd aliexpress webcam, humidity sensor, some quick scripts and another random wifi dongle.

Great fun and highly recommended for a weekend of (home automation) hacking.