and for the record I'm a little irritated by the apparent clockwork/rm finger pointing I keep seeing on these forums.
Don't be irritated, it's nothing against the Dev or the work. In my case, I had a pretty major issue that I suspect was caused by CW Recovery. If you have additional insight into what might have caused the issue, I'm happy to hear it, as I want to figure it out as badly as anybody.
After I re-downloaded and reinstalled ROM Manager, I tried to use it to create a backup, and that failed. I then reinstalled again, and tried to use it to reflash SPRecovery, it failed the first time and FCed, then succeeded the second time.
So, for me it's been flaky. SP has always worked without fail or glitch.
If CW works for you, that's great. It hasn't been reliable for me, and reports from other folks on this board indicate that there might be an issue with it. If there are issues, I hope they get resolved, since ROM Manager is a really clever bit of software.
We're all here to help each other out and talk about our experiences.
In other news, your point about the kernel is a good one and definitely something to check out.