Thanks a lot for the help guys, I'm at work right now and I will go over your suggestions one by one this weekend. Being more alert now, taking a look at the examples you posted, I now see how to approach this problem. The thing with python that I'm starting to realize is that there are a million different ways to approach a problem, so I find it great for experimenting (when time allows) yet very challenging to choose an approach.
Cheers, h. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list