I guess theres a ; missing after the eval block
Yes, thank you.

Quite frankly - I don't understand the "parent alarm" thing.
This was my answer to your request for an algorithm that could recursively call itself. Say $oldalarm is 3 and $givetime is 20. Even though cheatmail may have 20 seconds to complete its task, you know that somewhere higher in the callstack, you have another watchdog (which I refer to as a 'parent') that is expecting to be done one way or another in 3 seconds. Using this algorithm, you know that whichever watchdog is expecting to be done in 3 seconds will be the one to receive the alarm signal.