[dclaysmith]

I use MySql+cron as a simple message queue every now and again--it's great for jobs like sending confirmation emails or registering new users for a mailing list. ie. Tasks that make synchronous calls over the network and can degrade the speed of important processes (registration, etc). You just have to make sure that these tasks are going to be infrequent and not prone to spikes that might overwhelm the server.