Hmm. I'm getting outta my depth here, trying to get an expert to look at it. (I'll still tell you about any ideas I may have.) Also, Sophie mentioned that you configured the wrong Gearman port on your hack.dreamwidth.net dreamhack. You have

@GEARMAN_SERVERS = ( '127.0.0.1:8214' );

in etc/config-local.pl, but that's your web port. You should be using 17214 for Gearman on hack.dreamwidth.net.