Time out question

[DarkBlue]

My application makes several connections to
a remote database server via tcp/ip.
Usually all is fine,but occasionally the server is
down or the internet does not work and then there is
the 30 sec to several minutes timeout wait for the
tcp to give up.
Is there anything I can do without using 
threads,sockets,twisted etc. to have following :

pseudocode :

 try for 10 seconds
   if database.connected :
    do your remote thing
 except raise after 10 seconds
   abort any connection attempt
   do something else 


Thanks