I'm just a few years down the road from you and work in the type of environment you are describing. Even though my focus has been ASP and .NET, I have been fortunate enough to maintain one critical Perl script over the last three years. The script was recently retired, and I came to the monks to get ideas for other things I can do with Perl, even though I'm in an MS shop. They provided some great advice in Last Script. What now? that you might find useful

Cheers!

Acolyte
Studying at the feet of the masters