I think your main problem is in this snippet:

my (@data) = q[$thread->{id}, 
               $thread->{name}, 
               $thread->{date},
               $thread->{subj},
               $thread->{day_rate},
               $thread->{msg}];
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You're creating an array with only one element. Your snippet is equivalent to the following. Note that q() is equivalent to the single-quote operator, so the values won't even be interpolated into the string.

my @data = '$thread->{id}, $thread->{name}, ' .
  '$thread->{date}, $thread->{subj}, ' .
  '$thread->{day_rate}, $thread->{msg}';
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Perhaps you meant something like:

my @data = (
  $thread->{id},   $thread->{name},     $thread->{date},
  $thread->{subj}, $thread->{day_rate}, $thread->{msg}
);
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Update: Fixed the 'equivalent' example to single quotes and added explanation (originally was concatenating with double quotes which would not be the same).