I'm finally approaching the end of the llama

there seems to be one last hump I'm having a lot of trouble getting over

You're confusing your animals ;D

Anyway … your problem reminds me of wise words said by some wise people I have met. Of course, I do not remember what they said but I know the gist of it. The hardest part about learning something new is learning how to think. (Doesn't sound as cool when I say it.)

If you hang around the culture long enough, you will pick up on things. There are ways to speed up this process (tutorials, for instance) but I cannot help you with that. I just linger and learn as I go.

Also, Perl and Linux go together like water and food coloring -- so, if you focus on Linux administration, you will probably be using Perl ;)