Hi Monks!
I am trying to display the current tide based on the sample XML I have attached. Based on now's time changed to seconds against the times changed to seconds from the XML to show current tide, but I am missing something on the logic to show the current tide based on the time now. I hope I made it clear, here is the code I am using:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;
use Time::Zone;
use Date::Format;
use Date::Parse;

my ($today_datex, $today_time) = get_timezone();
my $today_date = "2013/03/27"; # using this to match XML attached belo
+w

my $now_in_seconds = str2time("$today_date $today_time");

print "\n $today_date, $today_time - Now in Seconds is: $now_in_second
+s\n"; # 1364345520

# create object
my $xml = new XML::Simple (KeyAttr=>[]);
# read XML file
my $data = $xml->XMLin("tides.xml");

my @time_in_seconds;
foreach my $tides (@{$data->{data}->{item}}) {

   if($tides->{date} eq $today_date) {
     $tides->{highlow} =~ s/L/Low/;
     $tides->{highlow} =~ s/H/High/;

     my $format_date =  "$tides->{date} $tides->{time}";
     my $date_to_seconds = str2time($format_date);
     
     print " Test: ".$tides->{highlow}, " Tide at: ", $tides->{time}, 
+"\n";
     push @time_in_seconds, $date_to_seconds;

   }
}

my $t1b = $time_in_seconds[0];
my $t2b = $time_in_seconds[1];
my $t3b = $time_in_seconds[2];
my $t4b = $time_in_seconds[3];

if( ($now_in_seconds >= $t1b) && ( $now_in_seconds < $t2b ) ) {
    
  print "\n Option 1\n";
  
}elsif( ($now_in_seconds >= $t2b) && ( $now_in_seconds < $t3b ) ) {
    
  print "\n Option 2\n";
  
}elsif( ($now_in_seconds >= $t3b ) && ( $now_in_seconds < $t4b ) ) {
    
  print "\n Option 3\n";
  
}elsif(  $now_in_seconds >= $t4b ) {
    
  print "\n Option 4\n";
  
}else{
    
  print "\n We have a problem!\n\n";
  
}



 
sub get_timezone {

 $ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/New_York';
 my $today_date = time2str( "%Y/%m/%d", time); # "%m-%d-%Y"
 my $today_time = time2str( "%I:%M %p", time); #"%H:%M:%S"

 return $today_date, $today_time;
 
}

=code
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<datainfo>
<data>
<item>
<date>2013/03/27</date>
<day>Wed</day>
<time>12:21 AM</time>
<predictions_in_ft>4.2</predictions_in_ft>
<predictions_in_cm>128</predictions_in_cm>
<highlow>H</highlow>
</item>
<item>
<date>2013/03/27</date>
<day>Wed</day>
<time>06:20 AM</time>
<predictions_in_ft>0.0</predictions_in_ft>
<predictions_in_cm>0</predictions_in_cm>
<highlow>L</highlow>
</item>
<item>
<date>2013/03/27</date>
<day>Wed</day>
<time>12:50 PM</time>
<predictions_in_ft>4.1</predictions_in_ft>
<predictions_in_cm>125</predictions_in_cm>
<highlow>H</highlow>
</item>
<item>
<date>2013/03/27</date>
<day>Wed</day>
<time>06:39 PM</time>
<predictions_in_ft>0.2</predictions_in_ft>
<predictions_in_cm>6</predictions_in_cm>
<highlow>L</highlow>
</item>
</data>
</datainfo>
=cut
[download]

Thanks for looking!