I'll definitely check out the sections of the text on ops research, and thanks for the commands too.  I'm admittedly new to maple (I've been more comfortable with mathematica) so the code helps.

To Robert: I'm just gettin gused to the language on this stuff.  I guess instead of Hessian determinant, I should have said principal minors of the hessian.  Thanks for pointing that out.  

I'll have to look more closely at the code you posted as an example.  Thanks for it.

Cheers