You're right. One of the things I was missing was understanding the difference between CPAN and CPAN.pm. I thought they were an old married couple or something...Limbic~Region set me on the path to knowledge about that.

The other thing I just couldn't see (you know, the forest for the trees type of thing) was creating a new repository and pointing it to crazy's ppm store. I even remember seeing something about creating a new repository but for some JOHNBROWNIT reason, I just didn't connect it all together as a possible solution. (Actually, at one point I added a new repository but didn't point it correctly - which in turn made me think adding a repository wasn't a solution for my particular case).

Thanks for you help!