Speaking of embedded, and in relation to what I had posted (asking for info on building an embedded system), I have done a lot of searching and found all the usual sources of info. It is not exactly what I am looking for, and the texts cited are scattered. One text that is almost mandatory reading is this O'Reily book: "Building Embedded Linux Systems - Yaghmour et al." The text does not read how I would write it, but it is good. I found that a lot of experimentation with VMs is excellent geeking out and a great practical learning tool. I think I'll get to what I want pretty quickly with some more individual effort.