How do we configure our miners? Can you plug in a monitor, mouse and keyboard setup to them directly, or are settings accessed via LAN?

Exactly what I was wondering.

KNC said it would be "stand alone".

And what pool would we join to get running?

Oh boy, this'll be fun. Huh

pretty sure its all done by lan, ssh login to the beaglebone then edit settings form there. should be quite simple really. Use any pool you like!

seems like everyone knows about ssh but me, how do you access a linux machine, using ssh from a windows (XP) machine?

Putty

+1 putty is dead simple