Using PHP/MySQL w/Drupal to update missing Google Geocode data

We recently needed to fill missing geocode values in a project's database. Using some PHP magic and taking advantage of hook_cron() this is how we filled the missing values:

/**
 * Implementation of hook_cron()
 * When the cron runs, try to resolve any locations that have a lat or lon = 0
 */
function overmap_cron() {
  // Fetch all locations with lat == 0 || lon == 0 and bin into $locations array
  $locations = array();
  $query = "
    SELECT *
    FROM {location} l
    WHERE l.latitude=0 
    AND l.longitude=0";
  $result = db_query($query);
  while ($data = db_fetch_array($result)) {
    $locations[] = $data;
  }
  
  // Loop through the geocode-less addresses and re-submit to google maps to try to get valid location data
  $identifiers = array('name', 'street', 'city', 'province', 'postal_code', 'country');
  foreach ($locations as $location) {
    // Boolean sentinel variable that control while loop
    $geocode_pending = true;
    while ($geocode_pending) {
      // Build address array and implode into single string
      $search = array();
      foreach ($identifiers as $identifier) {
        if ($location[$identifier] != '') {
          $search[] = trim($location[$identifier]);
        }
      }
      $search = implode(' ', $search);
    
      // Execute query and loda into an xml object
      $search = 'http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?output=xml&q=' . urlencode($search);
      $xml = simplexml_load_file($search);
      
      // Deal with returned values based on the status code
      $status = $xml->Response->Status->code;
      if (strcmp($status, "200") == 0) {
        // Successful geocode
        $geocode_pending = false;
        $coordinates = $xml->Response->Placemark->Point->coordinates;
        $coordinatesSplit = split(",", $coordinates);
        // Format: longitude, latitude
        $lat = $coordinatesSplit[1];
        $lng = $coordinatesSplit[0];
        // Create new object and update record in DB correct geocode data
        $record = new stdClass();
        $record->lid = $location['lid'];
        $record->latitude = $lat;
        $record->longitude = $lng;
        drupal_write_record('location', $record, 'lid');
      } else if (strcmp($status, "620") == 0) {
        // sent geocodes too fast
        $delay += 100000;
      } else {
        // failure to geocode
        $geocode_pending = false;
      }
      usleep($delay);
    }
  }
}