I said I was coming back, and now I'm up and running. I had a few hiccups trying to get a snapshot loaded, but now the witness is replayed and functional. I am on the latest version of 1.27.6, and will likely stay there until the next major fork.
I wish I had statistics of witness server locations, but I'm going to assume this is one of the few witnesses located in the US. In theory this should provide even more resiliency to the network, which is always a good thing.
Thanks to all the people who answered my stupid questions along the way, you know who you are.