With all due respect japhy, this post insults me. Not that I take it personally, but more, I find it surprising and embarassing to see content like this on Perl Monks (as if meta-conversation on the voting and experience system wasn't enough).

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think you're a guru. :)

I do, however, acknowledge that you do have good Perl skills (certainly far more advanced than I, but I know other languages fairly well -- they're just crappy ones that I'm too embarassed to admit to though :), but I consider "gurus" to be more along the lines of the Larry Walls, Guido Van Rossums, and Dennis Ritchies of the world (exceedingly creative people, that have significantly changed the face of computing).

To be able to spout out answers that can pretty much always be found in the documentation suggests that the answerer has a stronger desire to learn than the questioner, but doesn't suggest that the answerer possesses any supreme ability.

Also, your comment about "racing against people with polio" is a poor one at best. It's rude (I can't imagine how I would have reacted to seeing this if I was a person who suffered from this...it's bad enough that the mother of a friend of mine does have this disease), and unbecoming of a decent person to talk like that. Of all the other analogies you could have made, this one was ridiculous.

An apology would be in order.