[sagichmal]

    > Because I know I'm supposed to "handle errors" but 
    > all I really want is the program to blow up and hand me 
    > a stack trace . . . Has anyone come up with a sane 
    > approach to that problem?

Yeah, stop doing that :) Code your error path first, add your program logic afterwards. It's a shift in the way you think when writing programs, but it's a good shift and it makes your code more robust.