@cr0sh
on my recent visit to san antonio, TX, I went to an electronics warehouse called intertex and it was the first place I've ever gone that wasn't really a cell phone store with a few wires and ICs (coughradioshackcough). It was absolutely full of all sorts of motors, fans, hundreds of kinds of capacitors, ICs, piezo stuff, soldering tips and irons, multimeters (nice ones), LEDs, regulators, and that was only in the browsable area. They have a whole other section full of boxed stuff that you can only look at online. It was SO much more fun that shopping online, plus the prices were AWESOME on some things. They had lm7805 voltage regulators at 35 cents apiece ($1.25 on sparkfun, plus shipping). Plus, they have these HUGE audio capacitors that probably would have welded themselves to whatever I shorted them out on. So maybe you just have to look in the right places, I never would have found this warehouse unless I happened to drive by it.