Liars! Removing the TMIC took all of 2 minutes. However, re-installing it was a PITA. 20 minutes, two bloody hands, and about 5 "WTF!!" shouts later, I finally got the intercooler aligned perfectly with the turbo/intake manifold.
But it definitely was necessary, getting to that grommet and pulling the vac line through with the TMIC installed would have been a nightmare.
The wiring was pretty easy since I went the route of using "add-a-circuits" to add the wires into the appropriate fuse slots.
After manually calibrating the gauge for my elevation (5200ft) I took a drive to test it and it reads spot on to my Accessport.
Overall I'm very pleased. I can't believe I've gone this long without a dedicated boost gauge.
*Lights up green with the lights on and white with the lights off*