I have been in your position before.  I tried drilling conjugated verbs, and at least for me, it honestly didn't help much.  Thats what sentences are for.  Having said that, I whole-heartedly recommend drilling the dictionary forms by themselves and leave the conjugation to the sentences.  My reasoning:  alot of times when I'm reading Japanese, I overfocus on the kanji that makes up part of the verb, and even though I will correctly read it, this is due more to the presence of kanji than anything else.  Drilling verbs in kana will help your speaking and even listening comprehension a bit because you will be focusing on the phonetic structure more than relying on kanji or contextual clues.
Also, I completely understand your desire to mindlessly drill stuff.  At my peak, I was studying Japanese close to ten hours a day, and I can tell you for certainty that mindful learning for any excessive length of time takes a toll.  As you have mentioned, drilling isn't a great way to learn so much as a way to restock and stimulate material from prior exposure.  All studying is inherently stressful for extended periods, whether passive or active, but varying degrees certainly do exist, to the point where drilling isolated words can be almost relaxing compared to other methods.  And so, even though active learning is probably always "more beneficial" in a sense, too much of anything begins to result in symptoms not unlike those produced by Chinese Water Torture.    And that is one of my biggest criticisms of the 18-24 hour AJATT method;  which is to say that excess is never an ultimstely positive thing and certainly never "fun".

Last edited by Dragg (2008 May 16, 4:01 pm)

Those "production cards", where it says a scenario in English, have a big flaw for flashcards and that's that there's so many possible right answers, and you're only listing one.  Maybe good for a tourist who wants stock phrases, but not much good if you want to really understand the language.