[batbomb]

Have you ever lived outside Silicon Valley and looked for electronic parts? If you're in a small town in most places in the US, RadioShack is quite possibly the ONLY place you will be able to find a resistor, potentiometer, or even a fuse or soldering equipment half the time. The other places you may have luck are WalMart or Sears.

In a few small towns I've spent a lot of time in, there's joint Ace Hardware-Radio shack stores which are pretty useful.

It ain't no Fry's (and even Fry's is pretty crappy compared to dedicated component stores), but it's better than nothing.