globally disabling protect identifiers

[eluser]pocketmax[/eluser]
It still does it. Heres my constructor for my controller...

Code:

function __construct(){
                parent::Controller();
                $this->load->database('mydb');
                $this->db->_protect_identifiers = false;
        }

Heres the code in my controller

Code:

$this->db->select('id,lname,fname');
$this->db->where('timeout',null);
$this->db->get('mylog')->result_array()

And my sql now reads...

SELECT log_id, lname, fname FROM mylog WHERE "timeout" IS NULL

So when I get rid of the falses to turn it off in the commands and turn it off globally in the constructor, it still back ticks the where field yet it leaves the table name and select fields alone. weird.