So, not including the fire extinguisher, just how big would this device be?
Think I better start taking my steroids to get ready for what coming in the next 40 years.

Maybe the flexible optics will come far enough along and all that can be done in a few generic blobs electronically molded to the specs you need.

I forget, I don't know where the area of familiarity might reach for the movie "Spinal Tap". Either that or you're too young?
Look up "spinal tap goes to eleven".
(here is a good link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54UU-fPIsY

Although you may not truly get the humor without the rest of the movie for reference. But you'll get the idea...

If removing the battery helps, try resetting to the factory defaults.
It may be a slim chance that will actually fix the problem, but ff that simple test fixes it, all the better. Certainly can't hurt.
Otherwise, like you suspect, you've got bigger troubles and likely need to send it back for repair.

Luckily I found a great one that meets a few miles from here. Always new topics being discussed. Old and new (as well as old and young) members willing to share knowledge and help those who have questions.
There are a few others in the area that are quite cliquey with members quite full of themselves.

Although quite honestly, I find this user group has a wider range of knowledge and its membership more knowledgeable than most of the people in the camera club.

Plus, I don't have to wait for a meeting that occurs once or twice a month to get my questions answered. More still, I am one of only two Pentax users in the group... so that somewhat limits their ability to help.

If you have other groups in the area, you may want to try them as well. I do find that actually being face to face with someone on a field trip or in a room can help a lot. I am really a hands on type of learner sometimes.

Haven't spec'd the Sigma lens, and I know the Pentax is much less now than when I bought it.

Two things to consider...
Does the sigma have weather sealing? Is that important to you?

Also the silence of the SDM on the Pentax lens is nice. Does that matter to you?

I find the optics quite acceptable. Better than any other non-prime lens I have that falls into that range. I think most people find the quality quite good, but perhaps not meeting expectations of a DA* lens of the original price point.

I don't know if the price of weather sealing outweighs the price of a plastic bag and a rubber band, but a few times I got caught in the rain by accident, I had little doubts.

Those entries are from a poll I created during beta testing.
How'd those show up in there. Think some one found a bug.

Well sure, but PhotoShop goes to eleven...

Nope. SilkyPix (and the Pentax software) is an EXCELLENT RAW converter, the Pentax version being a bit more limited and IMHO more difficult to use. But they are just that -- thus SilkyPix excels at what it does.

If you want to do extra special processing you'll need to use another third party piece of software.

I know there are programs dedicated to adding frame borders, but something like photoShop (expensive), or PainShopPro (relatively inexpensive), or GIMP (free) will give you the capability to do these and even script them up to be repeatable. (not sure of GIMP's feature set but I assume it has some form of actions)

Yeah, the thing with GB is it takes all surrounding pixels, so your bride will blur into the brick wall (or if masked out, the blank area is still used in the calculations). There is a way to mask and not have masked pixels affect your image, but it can still create a bit of a halo.

I had a hard time getting GB to look right with these sorts of images, thus I use Lens Blur (which you wont have). Its not always the best but it seems to get around some of these issues.
You may want to cut out the bride, then smear the edges to create similar colors inside the mask, apply GB, then re-trim to the original mask. This might help eliminate the halo effect.
Hopefully someone with a little more PS knowledge can help how to mask out an area and still GB to look "correct".

Things seem better but still chokes up once in a while.
I'd guess it was a ISP or backbone problem, but other sites in similar vicinity seem to have no delays. Of course, I have no idea how they're connected to get over here... So if no one else is having issues, it must be localized to my area.

I would not want one of those yellow signs here. I always thought it in bad taste to single out the mentally challenged. (Glad to see I'm not the only one who reads the signs that way.)
Funny thing, the signs were taken down in my old neighborhood when I grew up and moved out. Hmmm.... Hey, wait a minute...