[eluser]gtech[/eluser]
sorry didn't mean to put you down its not easy starting out on a new technology, and I dont know half of CI. I just strongly believe validation belongs in the controller and you call the model in the callback functions, you are doing something the validation code isnt designed to do.. I will take a look at how the callback functionality works for you.
[edit]
where are your loading your validation library?, in the controller or in the model? If I understand the validation code correctly(which is debatable) the callback function works by storing a reference to the code its initialised by in $this->CI. It then parses out "callback_" and stores the function name in $rule... The callback looks like this: $this->CI->$rule(......