9,000 feet in Colorado has snow.... ughhhh....

Actually, what "I" do is to test the url:
if (ereg('/myappTEST/',$_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])) $TEST=1;
if (ereg('/myapp/',$_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])) $PROD=1;
You certainly can use defines, but it sounds like you are looking for something a bit different than what I do. I have links to go to the env and its pretty straightforward after that. I use vars, or could use defines so that I can post code to production but make sure test code does not execute unless we are in the test env.