I couldn't agree more with brothers FoxtrotUniform and Dog and Pony: pick up a couple of languages, and tinker with the things that interest you. The more you tinker, the more you'll learn, and the more things you might find to learn.

A quick thing about database programming: learning DBI is easy. Without ever having touched Perl before, I was able to put together some CGI scripts that displayed information from a database in mere minutes - but only because I knew some SQL. Focus on SQL. While there are some database abstraction modules available, I feel that they limit a person's understanding of how a database is structured and how to work with them. While every implementation of SQL is somewhat different, the concepts are the same and are portable from development tool to development tool. It's neat being able to take what I know about SQL and use it in Visual C++, Perl, and Powerbuilder.

And from personal experience. . . picking up CGI with Perl may be easier with Apache than with IIS. Granted, I've seen some really neat things done with Perl on IIS, but I don't think it's as easy as Apache for someone trying to learn. And, you don't have to worry about security quite as much with Apache ;)

Hope this helps :) Good luck to you!
MrCromeDome