Please expand. How would you recommend I go about to learn this (not in a
formal setting)? I can not afford to take classes and because of a head
injury doubt I could complete it successfully anyways.

In your list I notice you do not mention learning any programming language.
Why is that?

What do you mean by "OS shell integration"?  Is that saying I need to learn
BASH as opposed to Python?

"string operations must mean BASH....

when you say "regular expressions"  is this a good resource here
<http://www.aboutlinux.info/2006/01/learn-how-to-use-regular-expressions.html>?
Would I use this with BASH or Python or both?

I notice that in http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ there is a section that
covers using Python with websites so handling and forming automated web
requests is probably covered in more advanced  Python tutorials.

So to sum it up I think I need to learn Python and BASH. Is this correct? I
also need to learn XML,  JSON  (what do you mean when you say "from xml.dom
import minidom ; import json") and SQL
:-)~MIKE~(-:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

For all the pen testing and hacker stuff I went through (7 some odd years
ago), here's what you'll want to know how to do, in approximate order of
priority:

xml and json parsing (from xml.dom import minidom ; import json)
connecting to and using a database (learn enough SQL to be able to navigate
around one here too), learning sqlalchemy will be enough to land you a job
in the field
OS shell integration (import os)
string operations
regular expressions (import re)
handling and forming automated web requests