Custom chat not showing Usernames?

[asdfadrian]

Here is a screenshot of the issue.

The conding header for the non-boxed area of the screenshot is shown below:

error_reporting(0);
session_start();
header('Cache-control: private'); // IE6 fix
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8");
if (!isset($_SESSION['USER_ID'])) $_SESSION['USER_ID'] = rand(1, 24);
$USER_ID = $_SESSION['USER_ID'];

session_write_close();
ob_flush();
flush();

Whereas the red boxed portion has the header:

error_reporting(0);
session_start();
header('Cache-control: private'); // IE6 fix
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8");

$con = mysql_connect ("xxxxxx","xxxxxx", "xxxxxx");
 mysql_select_db ("aaronxxxxxx_vbulletin");

$userid = intval($_COOKIE[bbuserid]); 
$sql = @mysql_query("SELECT username FROM user WHERE userid=$USER_ID");

				while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
				$username = $row['username'];
			}

session_write_close();
ob_flush();
flush();