[tlug] In the beginning there is GRUB... or is there another?

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

TLUG,

I seem to be in a zone of tweaking my computers these days, so here's 
the latest minor irritant.
When I boot my computer, it goes like this:

1. I see some text saying something about the Nvida card. This goes by 
very quickly.
2. The motherboard gets a splash screen, with ASUS telling me it's "Rock 
Solid, Heart Touching". How nice. Also, only a few seconds.
3. I get a blank screen with only a flashing underline cursor in the top 
left hand side. No command prompt, just a cursor. This lasts for 10 or 
15 seconds.
4. The screen flickers, and then the cursor has moved to further up the 
top left of the screen. This only lasts a moment.
5. The purple Ubuntu Lucid splash screen appears, does it's thing with 
the dots going from white to orange, and then I get taken to my login 
screen.
Each step moves reasonably quickly, except for step 3. I have no idea 
what step 3 is. The hard drive is inactive, the CPU fan is quiet. It's 
like it's waiting for a time out of some kind.
For a while I assumed it was GRUB quietly doing a time out. However, if 
I press [shift] or [esc], I don't get taken to the GRUB menu. There is 
no response to any key.
I edited and checked my GRUB config files and made sure all the time 
outs were set to 0. Also, by pressing [shift] during step 4, I'm pretty 
sure that's when GRUB kicks in, because that's when I can get the GRUB 
menu to come up.
So... it's like there's something between the POST and GRUB... but what 
the heck would that be? And why does it take so long to do its thing?
Most importantly, can I get it to not to whatever it's doing, or do it 
quicker, so I can boot faster? My spider sense tells me it's just some 
time out of some kind, so surely I can skip it.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

--
Dave M G