Glad to hear she arrived for you.
You may want to check you´ve got your PNDs in the relevant dir structure before reflashing etc but some folk have had corrupted installs that wont launch PNDs. (I believe)
As for dev tools and on the Pandora development you'll want to boot from SD as the dev tools take at least 700mb.
You know what your upto clearly but thats still no reason to not use Dave1234s´ excellent PND utilities for SD card set up and a gui based OPKG installer for the dev tools. Grab both here
http://boards.openpa...opkg-installer/
Be sure to make the ext3 filesystem partition at least 700mb larger than the default 900 it requires, to give space for the dev tools plus no doubt a ton of other opgk installs you'll want to make. Other than that you just need the root filessystem image from the OP main site but thats linked in Daves thread.
As for wifi you´ll have to experiment as folks mileage varies from unit to unit (its handy to enable it on boot but to hotkey a toggle for it (theres a guide in the tweaks thread in the help forum), dont bother with a default keyring password, leave it blank or it will ask for it constantly (theres a removal tweak in the same place)), but once toggled on, you should be able to detect available networks from the panel icon, enter the password and it should connect. You can then right click to edit the properties and make it auto connect etc. USB Lan adapters also work for wired connections with just ´create a connection´ and no further details needed. You may need to change router channels and encryption types to get better speeds as Pandora is definitely picky about routers. I couldnt get a connection in France at all on a recent holiday and my mifi wasnt any use as there was no 3g coverage anywhere to roam to. Tethered to USB Lan despite the glorious weather was soon scrapped for sun and fine wine with Exaile booming tunes to my creative BT speakers
Hope you get sorted and looking forward to your dev creations! This isnt meant to be patronising either, you know way more then me about linux, Im just suggesting good tools to speed you up in getting sorted out.