a few suggestions/thing's i'm missing

[powerchaos]

this script is taken care of by signature.php ... it is not that hard to put a psuedocronjob in it that use the same things

a user use his signature all the time to show there pets and to grow there pets
just put the cronjob into the signature script and put a main cronjob at the main page
ont hat way the script always get updated per time the signature get loaded

i also used that system before and it works like it need to be
if no users look , who cares then if a pet die ?
so if you put a check into the signature then it will run like a cronjob

use a timestamp in the db and update the timestamp based on last check , also put a timer on it when it need to be updated so you can get a fully automatic system
it is easy to create and does his job perfect

hopely this provide a solution (i used this for a status script , checks where done in the status image script before it showed the status :D )

Greetings From PowerChaos

edit:
for server load is also a easy fix
you can use timestamps in the future ( like run cron every hour)
so you put in the db a timestamp of 1 hour ahead
then in the script you just load the timestamp and then prevent updating if the hour is not expired

or you work with current time and fixed times in the script and then no db is needed

Greetings From PowerChaos