Larry Felton Johnson wrote:

> I look forward to browsing this list and asking questions from time to
> time.  ruby strikes me as a very good scripting language.

Welcome aboard! Ruby should be more than capable for the kinds of system 
administration tasks you described.

If you weren't already aware of it, the http://ruby-doc.org web site 
does a good job of organizing various documentation resources for Ruby. 
And of course you can always ask questions on the list.