mtearle - I'd email you if I could, but you didn't post your email address -:^)
Thanks for the comments. Re grammar, I'm interested in one thing at this point: which parts are so painful to read that even skipping them is out of the question. I'm talking about truely obnoxious text, not just intro which you're too advanced for. Word: this is in reguards to Perl Design Patterns, which I'm now half-seriously calling a failure.