Rule #1 - Be Patient - Rule #2 - Don't ask when, if you don't contribute - Rule #3 - You have coding skills - LinuxMCE's small brother is available: http://www.agocontrol.com
To do that, you'd need to grant access to the laptop's IP using GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES TO username@192.168.80.xxx IDENTIFIED BY 'password';from running mysql on the core,then use the username and password when connecting from the laptop.