Taking a look back on all technologies and related configurations I touched (Apache, MySQL, Wordpress, Git), I'd agree it was worth the time. I'm pretty familiar with the basic Git functions (typical pull, push, merge, rebase, etc), though it was my first hands on experience with Git hooks. Git hooks rock.

Agreed. This makes a big difference in how people can deploy WordPress now. Next time you're doing research, you may want to take a look at nginx and how it works with Apache / what the tradeoffs are. It's a blazing fast server technology.