first set

Hi Derek,

So out of not knowing git very well and not being careful of my commits, I made a big mess on my end. I had some help in reorganizing them so the PR's will follow the request you asked for (I think). So this particular PR has all of the misc. changes not related to DB or CSV. Please let me know if I am on the right step and I will submit the PR for CSV support, then the DB. My apologies for making this complicated. Having wrestled with git for the past few days I think I now have a greater appreciation for what git can do (and how easy it is to misuse it).