look guys... I know how we frown upon bumping... so I won't actually bump. I'll just tell you guys to take a look here and see if you all can help me out?
really, I'm doing this for all of you. Everybody loves a challenge, no? I can't figure out what the hell is wrong with this code... especially when you consider that the way I ended up fixing it is really the same as what was causing the code not to work in the first place, only using a different variable (but in the same scope)
the gist is that I have a couple of variables in the global level, and inside a function when I call two of them (with the global key word, of course) the global ones aren't used, but when I use the array that originally contained the two variables (again with global) it does.