EvanK, if all you really want is a way to run the script 24/7 without it being in the way, you might consider running it as a service on Win2K. It's really easy to set up any program as a service using instsrv.exe and srvany.exe from the M$ Resource Kit. If you don't have the resource kit yourself, you could check it out from most any public library or just download the two executables from the InterNet. You can then start/stop/pause your script/service from any command-line with  net stop myservicename

Alternatively, if you really need to have access to your script via the application tray, you could use ActiveState's perltray, a part of the Perl Developers Kit. You would have to write more code to handle the windows events for tray applications and the PDK is payware, but you can at least get an evaluation license which is good for 21 days to see if it will meet your needs (and if you can/want to write the additional code to handle the events).

- - arden.