From rkleeman at energoncube.net Tue Jul 9 12:39:18 2013 From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann) Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2013 12:39:18 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting *this* week Message-ID: Perl Mongers, We are changing our normal routine of meeting on the third Thursday of the month for this month only. We are meeting this Thursday, July 11th, starting at 7 PM at the Ansir Innovation Center (4685 Convoy St, San Diego, CA 92111). Come join us to talk about all the interesting things going on in and outside of the Perl world. The folks at the AI Center wanted to remind us about the parking situation: Please park on either Convoy Street, Engineer Road, or Brinell Street as we have a small parking lot that we share with other businesses. Avoid parking in other shopping centers as you may get towed. Look for the green door marked Suite 210. We'll look forward to seeing you all soon on Thursday! -- Bob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From merlyn at stonehenge.com Tue Jul 30 18:20:56 2013 From: merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 18:20:56 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] anyone looking for a high-end contractor? Message-ID: <86mwp37cef.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> My gig at Nami is wrapping up. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. Still trying to think of something clever for the fourth line of this .sig From joel at fentin.com Wed Jul 31 08:23:22 2013 From: joel at fentin.com (Joel Fentin) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 08:23:22 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? Message-ID: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages -- Joel Fentin tel: 760-749-8863 Biz Website: http://fentin.com Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me From elspicyjack at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 09:47:03 2013 From: elspicyjack at gmail.com (Brian Manning) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:47:03 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: > https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages Saw it. Do you have comments/opinions about it, or were you just sharing the link for others to read? Thanks, Brian From chris.grau at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 09:57:35 2013 From: chris.grau at gmail.com (Chris Grau) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:57:35 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: > https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages > > -- > Joel Fentin tel: 760-749-8863 > Biz Website: http://fentin.com > Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm From chris.grau at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 09:59:28 2013 From: chris.grau at gmail.com (Chris Grau) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:59:28 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] Message-ID: This time, with content (curse you Gmail)! On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: > https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages Possibly related, this series of blog posts came up while I was at OSCON last week. http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-1-the-data/ http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-2-the-business/ http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-3-the-suggestions/ From joel at fentin.com Wed Jul 31 10:40:01 2013 From: joel at fentin.com (Joel Fentin) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:40:01 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> Message-ID: <51F94BF1.3030404@fentin.com> On 7/31/2013 9:47 AM, Brian Manning wrote: > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: >> https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages > > Saw it. > > Do you have comments/opinions about it, or were you just sharing the > link for others to read? No comments. -- Joel Fentin tel: 760-749-8863 Biz Website: http://fentin.com Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me From xrz1138 at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 10:47:00 2013 From: xrz1138 at gmail.com (Christopher Hahn) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:47:00 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> Message-ID: I am about done, and appreciate the pointer. I have not lost my love of perl, and will continue to use it for the small internal projects that it is perfect for. I was at the OSCON where the new language was launched, and have had hope (tho slowly fading) that it would become the next language for me. I remain hopeful but with eyes open. Take care all, Christopher On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: > https://speakerdeck.com/**stevan_little/perl-the-** > detroit-of-scripting-languages > > -- > Joel Fentin tel: 760-749-8863 > Biz Website: http://fentin.com > Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me > ______________________________**_________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/**listinfo/san-diego-pm > -- Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire. Christopher Hahn == xrz1138 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joel at fentin.com Wed Jul 31 11:16:12 2013 From: joel at fentin.com (Joel Fentin) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 11:16:12 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51F9546C.7020408@fentin.com> On 7/31/2013 9:59 AM, Chris Grau wrote: > This time, with content (curse you Gmail)! > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: >> https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-languages > > Possibly related, this series of blog posts came up while I was at > OSCON last week. > > http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-1-the-data/ > http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-2-the-business/ > http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-perlers-part-3-the-suggestions/ > > Most interesting. I'm left with the feeling it's too late. -- Joel Fentin tel: 760-749-8863 Biz Website: http://fentin.com Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me From dwalin at dwalin.ru Wed Jul 31 11:44:58 2013 From: dwalin at dwalin.ru (Alex Tokarev) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 11:44:58 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sorry if that may sound too harsh but I call BS on this one; she's talking about the outreach and marketing but what that has to do with the real world? Nobody chooses a language for a project based on how cool the language is perceived! Everybody's looking for the killer features that would help them crank out cool shit in no time, and that's about the only reason to adopt any new (old?) language. Now don't get me wrong, I chose Perl for a greenfield project (that's about to hit the market, finally) because Perl gave me several things I needed and it was *easier* to go with all Perl's kinks rather than try to adapt something else. Am I going to continue with Perl on that project? Abso-frigging-lutely, because the problems and solutions are still there and will be there. Will I necessarily choose Perl for another, different project? Whoa there, who said one size fits 'em all? Which actually brings us to another problem: locked-in-eness. Why is everybody so obsessed with Perl not being used *EVERYWHERE*? Why is it so typical for Perlers to dramatize everything around Perl? What's so special about Perl, anyway? It's a TOOL. It's used to do THINGS. If you need to do a different thing, use a different tool! As for the graphs showing the age of Perlers based on YAPC attendance, that is a very dubious proposition at best. Attending a conference costs money, a lot of it. Who will pay for Joe the junior dev to attend just because they could? Yeah, um. Better let's send Jack the senior dev over there, maybe he'll pick up some cool idea that'd benefit the whole team, and if not he'd just have a good time with the old buddies. There is a ton of people out there who are interested in Perl. They won't learn it unless Perl offers them FEATURES that make time investment worthwhile. They won't learn it unless they can find PAYING JOBS requiring Perl knowledge, and there won't be any jobs without FEATURES that make using Perl *cheaper* in the long run than anything else. All the rest is BS. So in the end, is Perl dying or not? Eh, who cares. As long as it solves my problems, I'm gonna use it. When it stops solving my problems or becomes too costly to use, I'll switch. It's that simple. Regards, Alex. On 7/31/13 9:59 AM, "Chris Grau" wrote: >This time, with content (curse you Gmail)! > >On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Joel Fentin wrote: >> >>https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-the-detroit-of-scripting-langu >>ages > >Possibly related, this series of blog posts came up while I was at >OSCON last week. > >http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-p >erlers-part-1-the-data/ >http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-p >erlers-part-2-the-business/ >http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2013/07/22/the-rising-costs-of-aging-p >erlers-part-3-the-suggestions/ >_______________________________________________ >San-Diego-pm mailing list >San-Diego-pm at pm.org >http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm From naterajj at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 13:36:48 2013 From: naterajj at gmail.com (Juan J. Natera) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 13:36:48 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > As for the graphs showing the age of Perlers based on YAPC attendance, > that is a very dubious proposition at best. Attending a conference costs > money, a lot of it. Who will pay for Joe the junior dev to attend just > because they could? Yeah, um. Better let's send Jack the senior dev over > there, maybe he'll pick up some cool idea that'd benefit the whole team, > and if not he'd just have a good time with the old buddies. > Yeah, that's why Perl Monger meetings are full of youngsters, because they can afford local meetings. right? Except the avg age of attendees to PM meetings is IME closer to the YAPC numbers. Finding Perl developers is a problem, as will tell you anybody that is trying to get them. Juan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwalin at dwalin.ru Wed Jul 31 15:08:28 2013 From: dwalin at dwalin.ru (Alex Tokarev) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:08:28 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: There is nothing special about Perl in that regard. Everybody's complaining about how hard it is to find good developers. I work for a major player in HTML5/JavaScript field, and we literally *can't* find people who grok JavaScript enough to work on the framework core. Does that mean that JavaScript is dying? Nope, marketoids are trumping about how market is growing enormously, blah blah. There's also nothing special about hiring landscape in the software industry at large. From my very limited experience with it I can tell that it's about the same as in other high-tech industries. When I was working in telecom, finding really talented people was an epic problem. How did we cope? Well, instead of trying to find experienced junior level people ? which is a totally ridiculous idea by the way, how would they still be junior if they're already experienced? ? we used to grow them ourselves. With spectacular results I must say. I fail to see how that does not translate to the software industry. Can't really say anything about PM median age, I wasn't there in its heyday.. Did it ever feel like preschool around here? Regards, Alex. From: "Juan J. Natera" Date: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 1:36 PM To: Alex Tokarev Cc: Perl Mongers Subject: Re: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] > As for the graphs showing the age of Perlers based on YAPC attendance, > that is a very dubious proposition at best. Attending a conference costs > money, a lot of it. Who will pay for Joe the junior dev to attend just > because they could? Yeah, um. Better let's send Jack the senior dev over > there, maybe he'll pick up some cool idea that'd benefit the whole team, > and if not he'd just have a good time with the old buddies. Yeah, that's why Perl Monger meetings are full of youngsters, because they can afford local meetings. right? Except the avg age of attendees to PM meetings is IME closer to the YAPC numbers. Finding Perl developers is a problem, as will tell you anybody that is trying to get them. Juan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rotsen at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 15:44:50 2013 From: rotsen at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor?=) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:44:50 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I agree that most PERL developers are older. I thought that the problem was a shortage of PERL jobs not a shortage of PERL programmers. I like PERL but one of the reason that I do not work with it, is the lack of PERL jobs when looking for employment. I want to see what PERL 6 brings. Nestor On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Juan J. Natera wrote: > > As for the graphs showing the age of Perlers based on YAPC attendance, >> that is a very dubious proposition at best. Attending a conference costs >> money, a lot of it. Who will pay for Joe the junior dev to attend just >> because they could? Yeah, um. Better let's send Jack the senior dev over >> there, maybe he'll pick up some cool idea that'd benefit the whole team, >> and if not he'd just have a good time with the old buddies. >> > > Yeah, that's why Perl Monger meetings are full of youngsters, because they > can afford local meetings. right? Except the avg age of attendees to PM > meetings is IME closer to the YAPC numbers. > > Finding Perl developers is a problem, as will tell you anybody that is > trying to get them. > > Juan > > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lloyd at crunchtimecorp.com Wed Jul 31 15:50:01 2013 From: lloyd at crunchtimecorp.com (Lloyd Evetts) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:50:01 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Even 10 years ago when I was first hiring Perl developers it wasn't easy. These days in San Diego I find it hard to find any qualified developers, but a Perl developer is harder to find than PHP. Junior and intermediate the only Perl I've come across are people working for Yahoo in their QA, but at the more senior level they are out there. We post positions on Craigslist every month for Perl even if we don't have an immediate need just in case the right person comes up. Nice to see some life in this mailing list! On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 3:44 PM, N?stor wrote: > I agree that most PERL developers are older. > > I thought that the problem was a shortage of PERL jobs not a shortage of > PERL programmers. I like PERL but one of the reason that I do not work > with it, is the lack of PERL jobs when looking for employment. > > I want to see what PERL 6 brings. > > Nestor > > > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Juan J. Natera wrote: > >> >> As for the graphs showing the age of Perlers based on YAPC attendance, >>> that is a very dubious proposition at best. Attending a conference costs >>> money, a lot of it. Who will pay for Joe the junior dev to attend just >>> because they could? Yeah, um. Better let's send Jack the senior dev over >>> there, maybe he'll pick up some cool idea that'd benefit the whole team, >>> and if not he'd just have a good time with the old buddies. >>> >> >> Yeah, that's why Perl Monger meetings are full of youngsters, because >> they can afford local meetings. right? Except the avg age of attendees to >> PM meetings is IME closer to the YAPC numbers. >> >> Finding Perl developers is a problem, as will tell you anybody that is >> trying to get them. >> >> Juan >> >> _______________________________________________ >> San-Diego-pm mailing list >> San-Diego-pm at pm.org >> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm >> > > > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > -- Lloyd Evetts Vice President Phone: (858) 943-1773 Skype: lloydevetts -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rkleeman at energoncube.net Wed Jul 31 16:24:12 2013 From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:24:12 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It sounds like many people would like to be able to find middle and junior level Perl people (programmers, sysadmins, etc), and those people are really hard to find, as opposed to the senior level people, which are just plain hard to find. Is there anything this group can do to work on that issue? Do we need some training sessions? Do we need to be better at answering beginner level questions? Should we focus on outreach? Perhaps the answer is to keep on doing what we're doing? With the group of talented folks that are in this group, I'm sure we could make anything happen. What would you like to see happen? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From xrz1138 at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 16:29:26 2013 From: xrz1138 at gmail.com (Christopher Hahn) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:29:26 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: LOL...I am a senior willing to take a middle level role, if it involves perl. I went from straight Software Engineer to a scripter, but then got pigeon-holed into CM and am looking at Senior CME roles. I just use perl when I need a tool. That is it for me. My stuff has mainly been internal tool code anyway. I am playing with Grails these days too. The whole convention over configuration thing has been taken quite far these days. Take care all, Christopher On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Bob Kleemann wrote: > It sounds like many people would like to be able to find middle and junior > level Perl people (programmers, sysadmins, etc), and those people are > really hard to find, as opposed to the senior level people, which are just > plain hard to find. Is there anything this group can do to work on that > issue? Do we need some training sessions? Do we need to be better at > answering beginner level questions? Should we focus on outreach? Perhaps > the answer is to keep on doing what we're doing? > > With the group of talented folks that are in this group, I'm sure we could > make anything happen. What would you like to see happen? > > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > -- Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire. Christopher Hahn == xrz1138 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From merlyn at stonehenge.com Wed Jul 31 19:15:00 2013 From: merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:15:00 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: (Christopher Hahn's message of "Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:47:00 -0700") References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> Message-ID: <86k3k62m3f.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> >>>>> "Christopher" == Christopher Hahn writes: Christopher> I was at the OSCON where the new language was launched, Christopher> and have had hope (tho slowly fading) that it would become Christopher> the next language for me. I remain hopeful but with eyes Christopher> open. What new language? -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. Still trying to think of something clever for the fourth line of this .sig From merlyn at stonehenge.com Wed Jul 31 19:19:59 2013 From: merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:19:59 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Is Perl finally dying? [was: Seen this?] In-Reply-To: (Bob Kleemann's message of "Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:24:12 -0700") References: Message-ID: <86fvuu2lv4.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> >>>>> "Bob" == Bob Kleemann writes: Bob> It sounds like many people would like to be able to find middle and junior Bob> level Perl people (programmers, sysadmins, etc), and those people are Bob> really hard to find, as opposed to the senior level people, which are just Bob> plain hard to find. Is there anything this group can do to work on that Bob> issue? Do we need some training sessions? Do we need to be better at Bob> answering beginner level questions? Should we focus on outreach? Perhaps Bob> the answer is to keep on doing what we're doing? It's partially a perception problem, like Perl is old and crufty. If kids only understood how many Perl jobs are out there where they give up Perl entirely because they can't find enough Perl devs, more would learn it. There is absolutely more Perl development happening today than ever, even counting the perl-ruled-the-web dot-com boom. There are more Perl releases. There are more Perl CPAN uploads. But this won't last long, if we don't get new blood. The big problem for hiring is that you need one or two *senior* Perl devs (and they're all happily employed, thank you), and a bunch of junior devs. But there aren't any new junior devs. So we're in a bit of a panic. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. Still trying to think of something clever for the fourth line of this .sig From xrz1138 at gmail.com Wed Jul 31 20:18:17 2013 From: xrz1138 at gmail.com (Christopher Hahn) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 20:18:17 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: <86k3k62m3f.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> <86k3k62m3f.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> Message-ID: Perl 6....well it was one of the Cons at which some of the big meetings were held. 2000 IIRC...maybe 2001. You were there. You have me a Stonehenge t-shirt and free beer. Still love the shirt. :0) Take care, Chris On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:15 PM, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > >>>>> "Christopher" == Christopher Hahn writes: > > Christopher> I was at the OSCON where the new language was launched, > Christopher> and have had hope (tho slowly fading) that it would become > Christopher> the next language for me. I remain hopeful but with eyes > Christopher> open. > > What new language? > > -- > Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 > 0095 > > Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. > Still trying to think of something clever for the fourth line of this .sig > -- Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire. Christopher Hahn == xrz1138 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From merlyn at stonehenge.com Wed Jul 31 20:19:34 2013 From: merlyn at stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 20:19:34 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Seen this? In-Reply-To: (Christopher Hahn's message of "Wed, 31 Jul 2013 20:18:17 -0700") References: <51F92BEA.8060805@fentin.com> <86k3k62m3f.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> Message-ID: <8638qu2j3t.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> >>>>> "Christopher" == Christopher Hahn writes: Christopher> Perl 6....well it was one of the Cons at which some of the Christopher> big meetings were held. 2000 IIRC...maybe 2001. Ahh, didn't get the context. Expecting something else. Christopher> You were there. You have me a Stonehenge t-shirt and free Christopher> beer. Still love the shirt. :0) Yeah, Back when we were making money. :) -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. Still trying to think of something clever for the fourth line of this .sig