I fully agree with Gary....the LE will only take you 1/2 day to build....I did two (my first soldering adventure ever!) first one took 6 hours, the second was done in 4 (once I figured out how all that hardware for the heatsink went together i was able to shave off a good 60 minutes!).
I'm hoping within the next 4-6 weeks I have my SSC and DSC and some nodes in hand and then I'll really get down to work on the sequencing. I'm likely going to take a week off work in September when the kids are back in school and get really focused on the music and sequencing. I haven't done any of that yet. i've got three candy canes attached to each of the LEs and they chase each other in test mode.