1) get the value of a cookie

Then do it once. I see three calls that are supposed to obtain the cookie value, although it's stored in a variable after the first call. <blcoqkuote>2) use the value to determine the db row;

I believe that's what you do when fix the errors I mentioned

3) get two fields from that row; and 4) make the value of the fields into scalars.

Looks like the code is doing that too. What problems remain in that code?