Starting in Ruby

I find I have a REALLY hard time keeping myself dedicated to learning something totally new without some kind of motivation beyond just “learning it”. For learning linux, my (initial) motivation was administering game servers. For learning Filemaker it was creating a database for tracking computers I built at my old job. Learning html/css it was Demopolislive.com and various other websites that I built.

So, I want to learn Ruby, but need some kind of goal and purpose. After some quick checking, I found one. My plan is to learn ruby through converting existing bash scripts and making future scripts for my IT job in Ruby. I deal a lot with making backup scripts and various other things in a number of linux servers, so this will be my starting point.