Yes, when working on code in spurts it's always harder to get back into it. My job is half perl, half general system administration, and not split in even halves. :) It's both all day, interrupting programming time with floor calls and hardware problems all day long. It can make remembering where you were a chore...
Just a side note....You realize of course that just putting a username in a cookie is not at all secure. Anyone can fake a cookie with ease. So it's probably fine for a protected intranet app with trusted users, but if you're trying to keep unauthorized folks out of a public website, that's not going to do it. Your best bet if you need more options than .htaccess files is to look into the Apache::AuthCookie module. I use a subclass of it called Apache::AuthCookieDBI, and though it wasn't all that easy to get going, I love it now.
cheers!
