Am I doing something wrong (maybe - I am pretty new to Ruby)?  it seems
that many time when I want to geet a numerical value out of a variable,
I need to make it a String first, and then use the .to_i function   ->
"#{count}".to_i

this can't be right, can it?

I would give a better example, but the server with my code on it is
having issues (thus my having time to post this...)

thanks