The downtime didn't bother me that much. What really bothered me is that my personal computer blew a power supply and I'm also suspecting that the mobo went as well.

My perl needs were satisfied with me reading Learning Perl: 3rd ed. For some reason I can't seem to see how the authors made the exercises in the book one-line programs. My perl files are at least 10 lines long (but they have a nice formatting style for maintainence).

Update 2/11: Over the weekend, I dusted off an old AMD K6-2 system and got Linux working on it and got a Lucent Winmodem (Linmodem) working as well. I went ahead and downloaded LWP and the Tk modules so I have something to play with if I'm bored.