This is a comment about your ISP.

I would be more aggressive in finding an environment that is suitable to you. What kind of work can you do if you are constrained to a machine you have no control over? (FTP but no telnet? Noone should work under those conditions!) You need to find something else.

I would recommend something like rackspace.com that will simply set up a cheap Cobalt for you (rental if you can't afford to buy one) in a colocation facility with Linux, Perl, Apache/mod_perl, MySQL, or whatever, then give you root.

They charge by the month, so if the project is worthwhile, you'll be able to pay your bills. If not, you just move on.

I would guess that what you pay over hosting off your ISP will be more than made up in the time and cost savings you get by having an environment you've got some control over. And you'll be a much more sane individual at the end of it all.

And if your client can't afford to provide you with at least an adequate and production environment, then they shouldn't be undertaking the project in the first place! If they aren't bright enough or experienced enough to realize this, you need to communicate it to them. It will save you both alot of heartache.

Hope this helps!