rpike, it is not unreasonable to be asked to provide the code you're trying to get to work. It helps explain what you are trying to do, and it's possible that the problem isn't where you think it is. One line of code can equal a lot of words. Moreover, monks have often been known to make other helpful suggestions about coding style, module usage, alternative approaches, etc. when they can actually see your code, so it is to your benefit to post your code and examples.

In the future, if someone ticks you off I would just ignore them. The worst thing that can happen on this site is to have your posts ignored.

Concerning your date problem, I would consider using a module that specifically works with dates and not seconds. My favorite module for this is Time::JulianDay. Besides avoiding the timezone issue, there may be problems if you use timelocal with dates before the Unix epoch (1/1/1970).