I realized two or three years ago that CPAN has answers for nearly everything. Now my first duty in the morning is a visit to the recent uploads page, where sometimes I discover something new, interesting and useful.

Another wonderful meta index for CPAN is Perlmonks itself; questions posted here are a good way to learn about modules and possible uses of them; moreover, sometimes answers given here suggest many different modules. Can you imagine a better way to learn something? :)

I had a lot of experiences like yours: CGI.pm, HTML::Template, Config::General, CGI::Application, Date::Calc...

Ciao, Valerio