Hidden files, selecting directories, & taxes

[Christopher]

Hello everybody,
    I had a couple things to ask:

1)  Is it possible to generate a hidden file (under Windows)?  I am
creating a program that saves information into a dbhash file and I
would prefer to have the dbhash file created as a hidden file.  I
'think' I have looked through the documentation but, as I have said
before, I am not a computer person.  I am a biology person who
recently discovered that he likes computers.  I have tried looking at
a file's 'stat' values, then making the file hidden and looking at the
'stat' values again.  I tried looking at some of the flags but I seem
to be stumped.

2)  Is there a simple and easy way to allow the end-user to select a
directory?  For example, let's say all files of rpt type are saved to
a certain directory (named by each user).  And we want to perform an
operation on each of the files, is there an easy way to get the
directory (when I say easy, I mean something like
tkFileDialog.askopenfilename or the like).  Right now I skirt around
the issue by asking the user to select one of the files they wish to
process and then I us os calls to get the directory path then use
listdir to get a list that I loop over.  It's a bit of a cheesy method
but I spent a significant amount of time making it feel 'natural.'

3)  (For US only) Is it just me, or is it rough that we have to pay
back the tax 'rebate' that got sent to us last year?  I plan my taxes
very well, but my wife and I owe $590 (instead of getting a refund of,
whoo-hoo, $10).  Just curious.

Thanks a bunch.

Chris