I believe the Mysql has gone away error is now fixed. I was able to add multiple entries and edit a few. I changed line 450 in Requests.pm to

my ($rv,$sth)=dbSelect($dbh,{WHAT=>'uid,title',FROM=>$table,WHERE=>
'fulfilled is null'}); #,'ORDER BY'=>'lower(title)'});

By getting rid of the ORDER BY part everything seems ok. I figure people can live without a sorted list for now. I do not understand why this would be a problem since the actual mysql statement executes at a mysql prompt. Oh well. More testing is definately needed.