[thelist] Javascript, cookies, and a non-reusable API

[danielEthan]

I posted a problem last week and have worked some more on my problem 
and could really use a js guru to tell me why what is happening is 
happening. I know when my functions are dying and where, but I really 
don't know why.

page: http://test.chc2003.com/CHC2003/
scripts: 
http://test.chc2003.com/CHC2003/_library/javascripts/functions.js

	There are a lot of alert boxes as I'm trying to figure this out. The 
first one it pulls up is the document cookie. Clicking on the 
navigation tree on the left, the name of the object will come up twice, 
once as it comes in, and once when it's on the way to a cross-browser 
API. A cookie is set when the id is set to display=none. That cookie is 
deleted if that section is expanded again. There are other cookies 
(RandomImage, columnCount) which are irrelevant to my problem.

The functionality works once for the first document.cookie that meets 
the requirements and then dies. It is dying in the getObject function 
(which is hopefully allowing this to be more cross-browser). What is 
strange is that the getObject function does work once, but not after 
that. Why would a function work once, but then stop working?

Thanks a million,
daniel