Wow, ok, thanks for your reply.

Pylon would you happen to know 'how' to disable timer0? I'm googling and googling but....

Thanks for the ideas, pylon.

Daniel,
Do you think there is a way to write it so that is could:

cli() <- disable all interrupts
*secret sauce*  <- enable the interrupt for the IRRemote. If the user interrupts, let's not worry about FAST_SPI and let's just figure out what the user is trying to say. Then we can go back to FAST_SPI
do the magic for the TM1809
sei() <- enable all interrupts

If the user is trying to input via the remote, it's not important what FAST_SPI is trying to push to the LEDs, it's important to capture that information. Then after we know what button the user has pressed, we can make some change to some global variable, and then go back to running FAST_SPI.

Sorry I don't really know much about why this can/can't work. I feel like there must be a way to ignore all interrupts except for when the IRRemote wants to do something, and at those rare instances it's acceptable for FAST_SPI to momentarily 'fail'

Please tell me what I'm totally wrong about. 

Nice, Thanks!

Using:
Arduino 1.0
ATMega328P
Pin2
Infrared Remote
Infrared Receiver
IRController Library
Devices Library
PCInterrupt Library

So I'm trying to use this library, but I can only get one keypress and then it won't receive any more. I modified the example code loop function to this:

Code:

void loop(){
  int val = irController.read();
  if (val == 0) Serial.println(val);
}

The output comes out like this on the Serial Monitor

Code:

Started
IRController: Pin=2 Success
[0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: ]
0
0
[2080: 1] [2084: 1] [1156: 0] [1108: 0] [1104: 0] [2108: 1] [1132: 0] [1108: 0] [2108: 1] [1104: 0] [1132: 0] [2108: 1] [1108: 0] [1104: 0] [1080: 0] [0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: 0: ]
2
[2108: 1] [2080: 1] [2080: 1] [1160: 0] [1104: 0] [1108: 0] [2108: 1] [1132: 0] [1104: 0] [2108: 1] [1108: 0] [1132: 0] [2108: 1] [1104: 0] [1108: 0] [1080: 0] [0: 0: 1080: 0] [2160: 1] [2160: 1] [2184: 1] [1108: 0] [1052: 0] [1080: 0] [1160: 0] [1080: 0] [2160: 1] [2160: 1] [2184: 1] [1100: 0] [1060: 0] []
3588

After one keypress I can keep smashing buttons but nothing new will come in on the Serial Monitor.

I've tried with this code: http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Components/General/Cheapo_IR_Control.pde
And it works fine, except that I can't use that code in my project because I need it to run in real-time.

Any ideas?

Where would the TIP1023 go?  Would it replace the 2n2222 in the diagram?