> Would it be possible to give me access to the code and show me the "quick fixes" for when it breaks? I'm usually on way later than you, so I could try to fix it after you go to bed.

The "quick fix" is to kill all the hung chat processes, and then everything works again. :-) The real fix is to diagram a chart of all the perl subroutines in the chat script, the execution flow, and the external files they access, so one can figure out how two processes can get hung trying to access a files that the other one has locked out.

> Alternately, I'm interested in learning Perl anyway, so if you could hook me up with a copy of the chatroom scripts I could take a look at them--I'm sure I wouldn't get anything "fixed" any quicker, but it'd help me out with learning Perl and it might just help everyone else out, too.

Sure.