Most efficient way to write data out to a text file?

[candiazoo at attbi.com]

Again, thank you for all of your input!  I was able to double the speed with
only a few, minor changes.  It seems like the biggest change came when (and I
don't know why) I was selective in importing my os, time and sys routines
(asctime() in particular?!).  I also localized some class/function calls, used
format strings instead of appending strings, etc.

Mike