Want to learn to keg, where to start?

I believe Matt Omura has a document that walks you through the process, which I believe he acquired from Ken. Basically, you put some CO2 in the keg to push out oxygen, then you siphon your beer in there. Done. It's really that simple. There is slightly more to do on the cleaning end of things, but really not much more than that. Really simple and easy.

To get started you need:
Kegs
CO2 tank
regulator
Fittings
Hoses
Tap
Its also nice to get a gauge cage to protect your gauges.

I got my kegs from Corny Keg Depot, it's a dude out in Elgin, sells out of his garage. Best prices, and high quality kegs. You facebook friend him and he'll post when he gets a shipment, message him asap after the announcement with how many you want. I went with ball lock, for no other reason than it's the prevailing style and most everyone in the club and most club equipment is ball lock.

Everything else I got at NFC Company on the northside. You can find better deals online, but in my experience NFC has top flight customer service. I bought my tank, etc. from them and they teflon taped everything for me, assembled it, and checked for leaks. Thats worth the extra cost to me. I went with a dual regulator to give myself more carbing options in my keezer. It's handy, but a single is just as good or better, if i had to do it again, id probably go single regulator. From the regulator you can get a distribution bar so you can carb and serve as many kegs as you want. Distribution bar or not, you need gas line to go from the regulator to the fitting which will snap on the keg post, these things add up, I didn't budget for that so i was a bit surprised at my final total, but thats my fault. Its just little things that add up, $5-10 for enough gas line, $5 or $6 per fitting, $1 for each hose clap or whatever etc. etc. small expenses like that add up.

Which leads us to the tap, even with my kegerator i still just use a picnic tap, its the cheap black plastic thing, no big deal, gets beer in my glass a-ok. One of these days ill build a collar for my keezer and put in somw nice assed perlicks and all that fanciness, but In reality popping the top open and grabbing the picnic tap works just fine at a fraction of the price.

Getting a batch ready for the 4th is doable. You could keg it on the 4th and it would still be doable if you had to. I generally prefer the "set it and forget it" method of carbing, in which you look up the carbonation chart for the correct pressure to achieve the correct volumes of co2 at a given temperature and you give it about 10 days to fully achieve this. The other method is what I like to call the Chuck Mac method, which I'm sure Chuck would be more than willing to teach you. Chuck has it down to a precise science, its amazing, his method, to be used in emergencies when beers need carbed immediately, involves shooting a very high pressure of co2 into the keg and shaking the shit out it. Works better if its cold. It's generally very imprecise, but it is effective.