IONature, thanks for the tip on Procare; I will check it out.
TheRealDrew, I actually was out picking up a copy of the Advanced CC and Effects book while you were writing this. It looks very good and a good reference source. For my MAC, I picked up a MAC Pro and decked it out. It is coming BTO with dual 3g chips, 4g RAM, 1.25 TB of drive space and that new ATI 512mg card; should be a screeming machine. For camera, I am using the Sony HC3 running in HDV. I also have another 100-150 hours of DV footage I will be bringing over. I am sure it won't be too long before I need more drive space 
Please give me a second, have to wipe the drool from my mouth, my tower is a bit older. There, now I am better.
As to ProCare, take advantage of it, it is good for getting appointments ahead of the line and getting service a bit quicker, but I will bet you will find yourself ahead of the help quickly as others have mentioned.
On the book, go to Chapters 10-12 & 15 as a start - that will get you really .going (13 & 14 also) - but those Chapters go into how to set-up a monitor for correction, how to read the scopes, checking the contrast, getting color correction going and doing secondary correction. This was such a clear book in putting the things altogether in one place for those subjects, alot easier than going through other things I had looked at.
As to drive space (and this will be easy based on your background) make your own drives, get enclosures (firewiredirect.com, wiebetech.com, macsales.com, granitedigital.com) and buy bare drives to stick in them. Takes a couple of moments (real quick once you get used to an enclosure) and can save alot of money down the road. FWIW, an hour of DV/HDV is about 12 Gigs give or take.
A couple of things you may want to look at, a SATA card to hook up external drives and the Intensity Card by Black Magic (I have not used it yet) but it lets you take the HDMI output from the camera and use it for capturing into a format that is an easier/better codec to work with than HDV (but takes up more room). You could also look at other capture cards, such as Kona, and they are great to have, but for many things a FW cable out of the HC3 will be just fine (Not sure what your final goal is with the footage, DVD and web are more forgiving than broadcast)
You could even edit in HDV (which I often do, it is not too bad except when final rendering/conforming) or the Apple Intermediate Codec (I was not a fan of the older version of AIC, and actually preferred to use DV Anamorphic for cutting and correcting then reconnecting for output, and on slower machines DV would perform better, but I think that is not a concern for you ) DVCPRO HD is another that many use.
There was a recent thread http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17558 about the issues. Note that the 8 bit/10 bit is a hog as Drew pointed out, I use it really for final renders/output.
I think I will follow TheRealDrew's approach and concentrate on capturing and logging to get started. Once I have some of that drive space chewed up, try making some basic sequences. If I am going to capture the entire tape would it be better to use batch capture for multiple clips or just pull the entire tape into a clip? One of my goals on the MAC is to have a better archive structure for all clips which would eventually be 'searchable' via animal/location. Any preferred methods?
One other question, it seems that the logging information is part of the project and not the media file. If the project gets deleted, etc all the logging info is gone. Where do you folks keep the logging information about each media file? Maybe I am all confused.
Try capturing a tape or two then start editing, get a feel for a flow that works a bit for you (as oppossed to using log and capture or capture all on all 150 hours and realize you do not like it)
I have a tendency to be a bit unorthodox when it comes to capturing and logging (meaning not recommended by anyone really, you would not do this in a large production environment, but it works for me ) but I usually just load the tapes and run them to the drive and worry about logging them later when I review them - with the cost of HDs being relatively low, I just find this easier than winding/rewinding the video and marking it - I will have to look at in anyway to see what is there, and found myself in the past thinking I logged a shot doing log and capture then realized I messed up, so that is why I changed.
You can set FCP to make different clips on time code breaks, so you will get a series of clips. The time code usually comes through fine for the clips (off of various Sony's) and if I ever need to reconnect to the tape I can, never have though, sort of defeats the purpose of FCP to some extent
What I will do is name the reel something that is easy for me to use for cataloging - such as 070219_Key_Largo_REEFA - meaning this is footage I shot on Feb 19, 2007 in Key Largo at ReefA. (Guess I am not one for subtle.) So this is easy to search for, at least location.
There are many other approaches - in fact I have dragged clips into iPhoto or iTunes and edit data there (flag them with a comment on type of fish, keywords for location, etc.)
Of course there are many other tools and approaches. You can export a Batch List in various formats (including a Tabbed plain text to use in Excel or other programs) and then there are things like http://www.squarebox.co.uk
And again, on the logging, capturing, database issue, take what I said with a big grain of salt. It coulld get you laughed at, then punched
The one thing I would say though (and I am sure you know this) is back-up your FCP files - when going through all the material, making notes, gathering log information, just keep on saving incremental copies along the way - sometimes files can become corrupt or you accidently delete them, then burn a CD later because once you have it marked you can always go back an recreate later.
