Ahh, I was able to modify my code with you what suggested. Here is the new code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#Variables
$firewall_log = "/home/jwilliams/firewall.txt";
$my_new_log = "/home/jwilliams/extracted_log";

open(FW_LOG, $firewall_log)
    or die "$firewall_log open() failed: $!";
open(MYNEWFILE, ">>$my_new_log:")
    or die "$my_new_log open() failed: $!";
while ($line = <FW_LOG>) {
    if ($line =~ /kernel Temporarily blocking host/ || $line =~ /block
+ed/) {
    # your line transformations would go here...
    print MYNEWFILE $line;
}
}
close(FW_LOG);
close(MYNEWFILE);
[download]

Now, I just need to figure out how to clean up the extracted info.

T.