Conf_init calls conf_path. the first line in conf path is:
static $conf = '';
As I said, once I globally changed the intended array variable to
something other than $conf ($config_vars for instance) it worked as
expected.
Now, as I mentioned before, before I tried to initialize in the
settings.php file, I just relied on the database value that I set.
This was not being retrieved when I called variables_get() and
variables_get() was only returning the value I had as the default.
The only thing I can think of from what you are saying is that in my
module I have to specifically call variables_init() for it to work.
Is that true? when in the stack is variables_init called?
During the bootstrap phase of course. The $conf variable is a Drupal
reserved global variable. You can find the rest of the global