I’ve continually breezed through my Ruby book day by day, learning more as I go, and supplementing my knowledge with various aspects of computers with which I am completely dumb. (IE: how did I spend 4+ hours on the computer for the last 10 years of my life and never learn how to navigate the command line?!) I blame Windows.
Anyways, my Ruby book has basically become my end-all source for information when it comes to Ruby. In fact, I no longer bug my husband incessantly about the basic in’s and out’s because I can just as easily find my answer somewhere in my book– which I’m sure, to some degree, alleviates his headache named Ashley. The progression of this particular book is incredibly comprehensive and helpful. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone (new or existing programmers) interested in learning Ruby. I’ve caught my husband borrowing it on more than one occasion as a reference guide, too. 
The first few chapters of the book were pretty simple to digest. Just in case I might have been fooling myself, I decided to read it twice, and some sections three times. I took extensive notes the second and third times. I would say I now have a firm understanding of the basics of object orientation, the Ruby kernel, and the basic syntax and grammar of the Ruby language. I also have a pretty firm footing on the history of Ruby and the basic ideas behind its most popular, current uses (ROR). Every day I try to relate one or more tasks I complete in my daily life to something for which I could write a program (usually something that involves manual repetition.) Then, I think about how I’d get started. Sometimes I start computing the idea, and move forward until I don’t know what to do next; other times I just brainstorm how the knowledge I have so far would apply to executing my idea. Basically, I’m trying to get out of “idea world” and into the mindset of a programmer (though I know the best programmers must be the ones who have a firm footing in both of these realms). It sounds ridiculous when I write out my thought process, but my reasoning is simple. I’m good with ideas, but I would be stuck in “idea world” without any clue of how to practically apply the things I’m reading if I didn’t spend time each day trying to “think like a programmer.”
Currently Computing: I am working on a text analyzer as my first “complete” Ruby program. I’m struggling a bit with some of the more intermediate forms of regular expressions so I’m reviewing that for the 5th or 6th time. I should be on to the next project shortly, where I will be learning more in depth features of Ruby’s object orientation abilities and creating a program that utilizes these features in depth. (Up to now my experience with object orientation is limited to simple people and pet examples.) Exciting!