cleanup

Your version number, in configure.ac, was not bumped for v1.0.1.  This does that (even if too late).

The autotools build system had a few rough edges these patches smooth out.  Once those rough edges were smoothed out, I cleaned up some of the code.

I'm also bumped the version number to v1.0.2, but you'll need to tag the tree and push the tag if you accept that commit.  I find it to be good practice to bump the version number in its own commit.  It makes it trivial  to go back and add the tag if you forget to...