Why does The Nerdkits Guide require the removal of the temp sensor to get the LED to blink? Is the concern the power draw from the 9V battery? If so, if I'm using a large 12V battery, any reason I can't leave it in?

You can leave it on the breadboard but if you do you have to modify the code to blink the led relative to the temperature.

Ralph

Why is that? Can't I have the LED connected to a pin that I turn on and off programmatically, indpendently of the temp sensor?

I was just kidding ;-)

Your question was why was it removed in the tutorial, that was just to get it out of the way.

But if you think about it varying the LED by temperature would be a good "next step".

Once you get the led to blink and you have the tempsensor working try this.

Real rough pseudo code:

Get temp
loop
If temp > 70˚ 
then turn on led for 20ms
turn off led
if temp < 70˚
turn on led for 60ms
turn off led

That would be a good exercise and once you know how to run the temp sensor and blink a led you know how to do it!

Ralph