I think I've figured out the root cause of the problem in Ubuntu 9.10, upstart. I've found that on my system my default runlevel is 'unknown'. When I init into a valid runlevel and restart, GRUB once again has a timeout. Of course, that fix is only temporary as the system will once again boot into runlevel 'unknown' when the system restarts. I think that GRUB2 isn't exactly compatible with a system like Karmic that uses upstart in place of runlevels.
I think I've figured out the root cause of the problem in Ubuntu 9.10, upstart. I've found that on my system my default runlevel is 'unknown'. When I init into a valid runlevel and restart, GRUB once again has a timeout. Of course, that fix is only temporary as the system will once again boot into runlevel 'unknown' when the system restarts. I think that GRUB2 isn't exactly compatible with a system like Karmic that uses upstart in place of runlevels.