MitchRE: That statement comes straight from the PHP doc page explaining why a FALSE would be returned.
Upon passing along your comments, I received the following from the host:
We recently discovered a bug that may have created this issue. A fix has been applied to the server and hopefully the issue has been resolved.
If you run into further issues regarding this, let us know and our Engineers can take a closer look.
RE: I’ll very likely push out an update, very minor, this week. If you wish, all you need to do is copy the class.utility.php file from your sandbox to the live sites.
Easy enough, I’ll do that.
RE: the other…
ahhh, yeah, some of that data in the sandbox is 2011 (!). So that makes sense. I’ll update the files on a Live site, see what happens and let you know.
Thanks!