Update: Rewrote answer when I realized he wanted second load number which is an avg, not current load.

Update2: In the first update, I removed the substr in the original post that was the answer because I wasn't paying attention. :(

John,

This should get you the values you are looking for in @load:

@load = split (" ", `cat /proc/loadavg`); # Get loads
@load = map {substr $_,0,1} @load; # Convert to first digit
$#load =2; # Truncate array include only loads
[download]

By the way this is not very portable as not every unix makes /proc/loadavg available. You might try:

$w = `w`; # run w and store in $w
$w =~ s/^.*load average:\s+//; # Strip of junk before loads
@load = split (" ", $w); # split them up
@load = map {substr $_,0,1} @load; # Convert to first digit
$#load =2; # Truncate array include only loads
[download]

And don't forget those \n in your prints or the MAIL won't make it.

-monkfish (The Fishy Monk)