Well, I did it …
I pulled the trigger on an automatic WordPress install.
It was remarkably easy with the Fantastico script library that LunarPages uses.
I have been playing (for about a day) with WordPress installs on my home Linux (Ubuntu) box. Prior to this I’ve been stepping through some web technologies. I started by upgrading my ancient HTML knowledge to something more Transitional. I dabbled with some stylesheets. I wrote some rudimentary PHP. I dusted off my database knowledge with a mySQL install.
And now I’m trying out a large HTML/CSS/mySQL/PHP package. Large for me, anyway.
[Update 2005.05.20 - fixed an ancient typo]