It turns out I can't use epoch. The way it's setup, I have three pull down menus (one for each: day, month, year) then I join them my $newdate = join(".", $day, $month, $year). And since that's as specific as the time is, I can't calculate epoch as a way to determine how long ago it was.
You have users specifying what the date is when they create entries? Do they ever remember to do so? Why not simply use the current time, as provideed by localtime?