ability to specify output directory

Hello @r-medina, 

Please review the following commits I made in branch 'thebyrd-output-dir'.

42b96f30663bcef1258e243f5c1b8a099248ddc2 (2014-08-26 11:10:04 -0400)
ability to specify output directory


R=@r-medina
VISIBLE_CHANGES=ability to specify output directory