Network statistics program

[Greg Fortune]

    I'm currently working on a program that will run some network statistics
for me over the span of months.  I want to send a ping every minute, collect
the results, and then store that information in a database.  I think I can
get everything working, but the issue of the one minute interval is killing
me.  How do I make my program just sit there and do nothing until the system
clock says it has been a minute?  Never before have I *tried* to make a
program do nothing  :).
    I consider a while loop with a pass statement or a time check, but that
seems like it would take up processor cycles for little reason.
    I also considered letting ping handle the interval and just use ping as
the piped input. Although this may be the simplest solution for me at this
time, I really want to learn how to implement delay.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Greg Fortune