First, ++ on a great post. I find that I learn the most these days from posts that give me a glimpse into someone else's thought processes. Thinking Outside The Box if you will, where the Box is my brain. :-)

I'm curious how you put together such a detailed article? Did you use the shell's command history? Did you use cvs to save each script as you modified it? Did you plan on writing up this as a post before hand? Inquiring minds want to know. The key question is how did you make all this reproducible?