That's why the editor is a tramp?

I suppose that was the obvious joke.

Here's something that I've known about for awhile, and used occasionally, but have only now decided I will learn and retain: you can edit local files as another user (including root) using TRAMP and sudo.

All you have to do is C-x C-f (find-file) to open a file, then type /sudo:. This will start prompting you for the user and host information, and then a password (your password), at which point you will be able to use filename autocompletion and such to your heart's content to load a file that you would otherwise not be able to access.

This is awesome. Eventually I will even get used to using TRAMP via ssh to edit stuff remotely, but for the moment, not having to switch to a terminal and do sudo emacs -nw <foo> is enough.