yer fair point. it's been a while since I did file uploads and I forgot about that. I will use the
<input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="2147483648">
to test for the value and produce a friendly error message to the user until I sort out the php ini file. I'm not installing an your error console because I use my own error handling script but I was expecting a user friendly file upload response to allow - not for script error, but human error, so the user knows why their file didn't work. Since I have to write this along with pretty much everything else, I have come to the conclusion that extensions are not for me.
Thanks anyway.