Well, I finally got my PC working, mostly. I say mostly as I have timeshare monitor space with my TV since my old panel is dead. So at least I can do basic PC things. Still no Net access yet, I don't have the spare funds.
Anyway, I still cannot continue my graphics work as in the process of reviving my dead PC, I found that something critical on my OS parition got FUBARed and so I can't boot. No biggie as I tend to keep my data on other partitions/drives and I have a spare hard drive handy. Pop in drive, reinstall Ubuntu and presto, I am back in business! There is a spanner in the works however: I lost my GIMP installation and I can't reinstall as I lack an Internet connection. I am going to see about trying to find a .deb package, borrow a friend's PC, download the package(s) to a USB key, then "sneaker-net" the package(s) to my PC. Grumble, growl, snarl. Still, at least I can do some some basic phote edits with Shotwell and my camera is working so I should have some sprodiac photo uploads in the future. I was aslo able to recover my Openbox and Tint2 configs from my old install so that is safe.