I don't know what you're doing there. It seems you've solved your initial problem, but that code isn't going to work correctly. Here's some code that may do what you want:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

while (<>) {
    next if !/^total/;

    my @fields = split /\s+/;
    my($day, $total) = @fields[3,4];

    ## Now graph the values or do whatever you
    ## want with them.
    ...

    ## This will exit the loop after it's seen
    ## the first "total" line. If you don't want
    ## to do this (if, for example, you'll have
    ## several "total" lines, each of which you
    ## want to graph), take out this line.
    last;
}
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To be invoked as such:

    % foo.pl <filename>
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