Happy New Year, everyone!
As is far too often the case these days, we ran into a problem while trying to make 32-bit software play nicely with 64-bit software. One of our OS X 10.5 workstations had 64-bit MySQL installed as well as fink's 32-bit ruby. It took some time to sort out, but we ultimately solved the problem by following
these instructions. Thanks to Josh there for the creative (though rather hackish) solution!