I just wanted to say out loud, thanks to Chris Pine. I started learning Ruby about 2 years ago (something came up early on, and I had to drop most of my "learning" activities). Chris' introduction to programmning was much shorter then :). But About two months ago I decided I had time to finally learn to program, and I knew Ruby was still the language I wanted to learn, so I google for "Ruby Pine" (I still remembered his last name it made such an impression) and I printed out your webpages.
After two months of toting them back and forth to work on a clipboard I finally feel like I understand enough programming to start learning 
Thank you Chris, your work has helped one more person in this world, and may be helping two more co-workers.
My first long-term goal is to create an automation type toolkit for forensic tools I use regularly. In the short run I'm gonna pop over to rubyforge or sourceforge and find a project to join soon, unless anyone has better suggestions?
As a follow-on thanks, Matz, the core devs, and all the listers... you've helped create the first language this SA/Forensicist has enjoyed working with.
Jason_Ashbaugh.thankful
