title: Perl get UTC time and get difference between UTC timestamps
body: <p>I'm looking for some Perl help on how to do this properly.  I don't mind using a library to do this.</p>
  
  <p>I'm pulling a UTC time stamp from a mySQL database, in this format:  2012-02-06 13:50:09</p>
  
  <p>I need Perl to pull the current UTC time and get the difference between the two time stamps in minutes (or seconds).  I was doing this in a Unix subprocess, but I'm having difficulty getting the UTC time and comparing it, since the local box is running on Eastern time.  I wouldn't mind doing this in Unix time, but not sure how to accurately get the UTC time to compare to the "last_timestamp" which is a UTC based timestamp from mysql.</p>
  
  <pre><code>my $date_diff = qx(date -d "\$(date +'%F %T')" +%s) -
  qx(date -d            "$last_timestamp" +%s); 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As always your help is certainly appreciated and valued.</p>