: the board thinks I'm brand
: new here (again).

You need to keep your cookies ! My cookie file is a softlink to a file on
an NFS mount, and the file (on the server) gets backed up regularly. The
same cookie file is used whenever I log on to whichever of the computers in
the house I use, so the board always remembers me through whatever new
computers or new versions of Linux (or Solaris, etc.) I install.

Andy