Welcome to the club!
There are a lot of shortcuts and tricks in Mac OSX so it might be worth your while to buy a book about OSX and learn all of the ins and outs of owning a Mac. You can really customize your desktop in all sorts of ways, including making your Mac burp when there is an alert instead of the normal chimes. Do you have the I Life suite? Feel free to ask me if you have any questions. I am not a pro but I have owned Macs for almost 10 years now and I also subscribe to Mac/Life magazine which has tons of useful information for Mac owners.