Ruby on Rails for zombies

http://railsforzombies.org/
This is a site containing a video lesson of ruby on rails followed by a series of lab exercises that can be  done within the browser.  The video and exercises are very polished, well thought out, and relatively painless.

After completion, you will:
  learn the syntax and idioms of the language.
  be immersed in the philosophy of designing apps the 'rails' way.

James Harden

James Harden is a lefty shooting guard who has played his whole career as an Oklahoma City Thunder-ian.

In many alternative universes James may have been a completely different NBA player.  In one, the Thunder would have drafted Stephen Curry, and James would have ended up on the Warriors.  As a Warrior, James would have  flourished as the best player on the team or he would have floundered as the next-Anthony Randolph.  In either case, his quirky personality, which I infer solely from his grisly beard, would have endeared him to the Warriors faithful, much like Baron Davis, who was also a beloved, bearded, plus-size guard.

Ruby on rails (RoR)

(From the perspective of an absolute beginner)
It looks like a programming/scripting language that is designed to retrieve (from files and databases) and present (on websites and mobile applications) data.
It is used in some very popular applications, like Twitter.
It seems to have a religious, cult-like following who try to convert non-believers into users.

First taste
Googling for some info about this language (or framework or whatever) led me to: tryruby.org.  This site was mildly entertaining and it served its purpose of enticing me to learn more about RoR.  Actually, I liked the embedded command line prompt in the browser, so assuming that ruby was used to build that site, it seemed like RoR was something worth learning.

Installation
I'm following this tutorial:
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/21/set-up-an-ubuntu-local-development-machine-for-ruby-on-rails/
It looks like I need to install and use git.  I've read a bit about this version control system, and it sounds quite intimidating.  I'm excited to learn about it, which must make me a bit of a nerd.
In the end, it looks like I've installed:

git = open source distributed version control system
rvm = ruby version manager
ruby =  dynamic programming language
gem = ruby packaging system
rails = a framework to build web apps with ruby
capistrano = tool for running scripts on multiple servers
postgresql = database management system

This seems like a lot of stuff to get going.

Flavio Tours

This is a company that does excursions in Mexico.  It is run by Flavio, a Mexican who has worked as a dancer and in the hotel industry, and his wife Carol, whose mother was Mexican and father was American. 
Flavio, who is a self-proclaimed music, sport and tequila fanatic, is the main tour guide.  Ask him to take you to breakfast, and he will bring you to a delicious local taco stand where you can try any number of types of tacos including cactus, which tastes like green beans.   
If you are lucky, Flavio will tell you about the mother of Mexico, Guadalupe.  As he tells the story of this miracle, he impresses upon you his love and passion for Mexico and his great pride in how Mexicans will help each other in times of need. 

Playa Del Carmen

This is a vacation venue within Mexico.
It is about 2 hours away from Chichen Itza, one of the capitol cities of Ancient Maya.  From the remains, the Mayans seemed to be interested in astronomy, sports, and indoor plumbing.
It contains the "5th Avenue of Mexico", where a tourist is likely to be offered a good meal, drugs, women and the ability to take a picture with a monkey, a snake, or a lion cub.

This blog.

This web log will be used to annotate my thoughts on whatever I want to comment on.  So far, this seems to broach into subjects like software development, basketball, programming, movies, blogging and life. 

Maybe it will be read by my children or maybe I'll just read it to myself.