Guys...I just have to say this. I am silently amazed. This thread is more than I was hoping for and truly a wonderful thing. The monk's site, in my thus far brief experience, proves to exemplify the finest aspects of the net. Which in my mind is that of allowing people to form their own communities and then to take that potential and leverage it to one's own personal growth and benefit. Amazing.

I have to say that a good deal of what was written was a bit beyond my ken. That is a good thing. It gives me something to strive for. But a good amount was also clearly discernible to my beginner's mind. I found an amazing amount of insight that I could only find amongst monks' wisdom that was, nevertheless, within my beginner's grasp.

I wish that I could address each of you individually. But that of course is impossible, especially given the fact that I'm typing this while the boss isn't looking! ;D

But in the meantime I just wanted to express my gratitude and say that I will STUDY what you all have written, weigh what I believe to be the pro's and cons of this exhilerating discussion and take the vast majority of your suggestions into consideration; especially the reading suggestions!

But right now for example, though I do have some experience with C && C++ - a thing which I find makes this journey a bit easier - I am still only, for example JUST learning about how to create functions in Perl and got a handle on basic regexing only a few weeks ago (among a great many other things that I don't yet know!). So this process may take some time. That's okay. I'm a patient fellow. One virtue to balance out a great multitude of vice! I'm going to take the next year or so to improve my beginner's status, but I'm quite sure I'll enjoy writing Perl forever. Or at least until the inevitable forward ho' march of progress forcess us to adopt more advanced technology!

But when I have more time I will try to address the individual questions I may have as a result of this (formidble!) thread. Until that can happen, I just wanted to say...

DA MONKS ROCK!!!

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