What was happening was, I was using __PACKAGE__->log instead of $me->log to log when there was a locking problem -- which is of course intermittent and random -- and as the ->log method uses properties of the passed instance variable in determining the name of the file to log to, it failed (as designed.)

Score: David's carelessness when hacking late at night: 1 David's prudent use of HCF on minor errors to expose deeper problems: 1

Conclusion: risk mitigation strategy effective.

I trust the library got their cable back. I'm curious as to if it got deployed any after I left.

--dln