Newbie: Temperature measurements

[Budda]

Thank you all for those encouraging messages!

Trent,
thank you so much for your post. It seems like a very sensible and logical idea to do that. My Programmer is on the way (i hope I can do 16f628a with it) and i will get into researching each block. Are there any webpages you would recommend so I can understand those steps better?

mackrackit,
Great site thanks! i already spend a good amount of time there and am in the process of taking the whole tutorail step by step. Is it a problem that everywhere I look for entry level stuff I see 16F84? Will it be difficult for me to switch to 16f628a later?

Acetronics, thanks for the tip. It would be great to see a ready-built solution as something I could aspire to. However, after spending 1 hour (seemed like days) on the Maxim site I gave up. The site is clearly written for people who deal with electronics a lot and don't need explanations. I found several temperature elements and even some references to Time/Temperature/Event Recorders but they were nowhere to be seen as products...

Paul,
while your posts are still over my head I understand the need for something that gives me the time. After all I need a timestamp to record a timeline. Thank you for the tip about the memory. I will probably first build one without external memory and then a couple with. That would enable me longer logging times, no? A week would be great.
But more about that later, once I got the basics down...