The "problem" here is that the diamond operator consumes one line of input. So the line

while (<JOE>) {
[download]

eats the first line of the input file, but doesn't save it anywhere. You either want just

my @data = <JOE>;
[download]

or

my @data;
while (<JOE>) {
    push @data, $_;
}
[download]

and yes, yes, yes, always

use strict;
use warnings;
[download]