You can (at least on Slackware) kill the 30th-boot diskcheck with control-c. Just so you know for next time. If you did a hard reboot, you can't kill it, though, you have to let it verify the disk.
Maybe the whole problem is the nature of how I am. I don't like real-time alerts for things. I am extremely easy to distract, and my train of thought is bumpy, at best. One little thing changes, and suddenly I completely forget what I was doing.
The way I have Linux set up, there are never any realtime alerts. gAIM boxes open on a different desktop, error messages only show up in logs, and so on. That's a personal preference, of course, I can see more alerts being useful.
Also, while we're talking about it, I HATE that little "Take a tour of Windows XP!" popup.