Distribution of dotfiles
Here is a simple way to copy your dotfiles to new machines (.bashrc, .profile, etc...)
Put the following in your crontab to execute as often as you like. I run it nightly but that's probably not necessary once you have things settled.
* 2 * * * tar czvf .dotfiles.tgz .screenrc .vim* .bash*
Now, when you get on a new UNIX machine you can just 'scp' this file and untar it.