Hello samthewildone,
I am getting strong feeling from your post that you are looking for *NIX learning, if yes, then:
IMHO, we all should follow famous quote:
You are on right place, this is one of the GREAT forum which I have come across. We have different forums(shell scripting, languages etc etc). Please go to HOME PAGE and you will see all sub forums there, go inside them 1 by 1 and you could learn real time prblems there. OR if you are a lover of Documentations then we have man page sections too where you can go through all command's manual entry and then you could go to forums and read already existing posts and could learn from them.
Trust me when I joined here I didn't know even
ls command, today also I am learning but now at least I know few things and it is all because of UNIX.com.
Do and start reading here. And if you have timings issues(like most of the time I have, office, personal things etc) then also try to grab time in between and do something, make AIM of learning a new command daily(at least 1 command) and evaluate yourself after a month or so and keep doing this until you becoe expert 1 day. I am pretty sure anyone in this world who does HARD WORK it will always be a success.
Our best wishes are with you.
Thanks,
R. Singh