mini-rant

OK, so about a week and a half ago (4/21), I ordered some LED's, an LED tester, and some other miscellaneous crap from this Hosfelt Electronics place in Ohio. Later that day, someone from them called me to say that one of the parts I ordered was out out stock and if it would be OK to hold the rest of the shipment until that part came in, which she said would be "early next week." I said OK, since I still hadn't gotten my uC starter kit or any of the other components yet. Now today (5/3), I emailed them (no response yet... 12 hours later) and they haven't charged my credit card yet, which means they obviously haven't shipped it yet either. No status updates. No phone calls. No emails. Jack Shit. ugh....

I've started a spreadsheet of all expenses for this project. At some point, I will probably be posting it here, for those that are interested. Currently, the running total is around $260 (half of that is for the uC starter kit). I expect this project to cost anywhere from $1000-3000...
And, just for the record, yes, they did inspire me to start this project. "Nice idea", but disco? c'mon...
Anyway, enough of the inspirator bashing. In reality, I just wanted to make something that was different from that. Square pixels were boring to me. I really didn't have any interest in a "floor". I don't think I can really afford ~512 pixels... (no, I'm not in college, and no, I'm not living on the street... but there's just 1 of me). Perhaps, I can design it to be modular enough that I can add on to it at a later time.