For my own consideration in the future:

• Bluecore’s DVD drive is ruined and I need to find a way to make the Linux kernel shut up about it.
• apt-cacher doesn’t play well with slow download rate uplinks.
• Dismissing maintainer-suggested /etc/sudoers changes is highly inadvisable.
  

  dpkg: warning: 'ldconfig' not found in PATH or not executable
  dpkg: warning: 'start-stop-daemon' not found in PATH or not executable
  dpkg: error: 2 expected programs not found in PATH or not executable
  

• The Giant Blinking Cursor of Doom has not stopped being a thing that exists and is decidedly annoying and disruptive during reboot sequences.
• Purging grub-pc during unused package removal binges... I have had better ideas.