The Mad Hatter is right--you need to break these up:

my $AIM = new Net::AIM;
$AIM->newconn(Screenname   => $name,
        Password     => $password,
        AutoReconnect => 1)
or die "Unable to open AIM connection.\n";
my $conn = $AIM->getconn();
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Then, once you have $conn, you can set handlers, send messages and so forth:

sub send_aim {
    local($_) = shift;
    my $ready = 0;
    $conn->set_handler(config => sub {$ready = 1});
      $AIM->do_one_loop;
    $conn->send_im($to_screenname, "From $name: $_");
}
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See also, this node and this site for more info. (Wiredbots.com has good examples for setting/using handlers.)