PIC programming

Finally got myself a PIC programming board.
It's not working from within linux yet so that's a pain.
The thing is a k8048 from Velleman. You can put 4 different sizes of
PICs on it and that's it.
I'm starting to get the point what you can do with a PIC, basically
program a chip, put it in a circuit and let it do what you programmed
it to do as in, check a value, act on it, repeat it, blah, stuff you
do with a computer without all the overhead of having a computer which
takes 200+- watts in 0.5 watts.
Cool stuff when you get the circuit up and running.

The only thing that I'm still missing is how to integrate everything
so I can control my house with it. :)
Let's see where I get next time.