Today I received the XL_STAR package at my door, from UPS.
Unfortunately UPS charged me an extra $15 - an insane amount of money to get a free package across the border - but hey, small price to pay for geeky goodness! (ps, I highly recommend avoiding UPS for any cross border shipping, for that reason).
Since I mainly use my MacBook because it's faster and more convenient than my desktop Windows machine, I will be using VirtualBox (free from VirtualBox.org) with an installation of WindowsXP.
So far, the installation went smoothly, and I am starting to read the documentation... when can I plug in the board???