Thanks for the hint! I remember learning a little about that in a class a long while ago... but I didn't think about how it could still apply for this type of thing as well.

The reason why I'd even be outputting something to some type of data file... is (like I mentioned in the reply above this,) because this isn't a simulation that both runs and shows a graphical display of what is going on all that same time. I'm purposely trying to break it up into "episodes" so that when the information/data is turned into a Flash movie (or whatever is doing the graphical display side of things...) it can be a manageable size.