I could probably force my laptop to lower its TCP retransmission timeout or something, but I really need to replace the NIC. But.... I have an extra NIC in there for when I was testing natd stuff. So I thought I could edit /etc/rc.conf and switch which one I was using, right? Seems like it'd work... so I went in there and moved the cable into the right one while it rebooted. Came back up and now I can't ping it.
I was going to haul a monitor and keyboard in there (tedious) but I've just talked myself into the solution ... I think I need to unplug my switch for a second to flush its arp cache.
Nope... that wasn't it. *sigh*
I'm totally not ready to leave Sunday, mentally or physically (things to do).