Boy are you in the wrong genre, I remember being a complete noob mind you I'm still a noob, just not as complete.
I remember being frustrated, and disgusted about having to ingest all that knowledge, but not knowing where to start, so I feel your pain.
And the manuals aren't that bad, the information is in there.
Otherwise why would everyone be wearing out the R T F M keys on they're keyboards?
All we can do is post what we know, and alot of what we know came from R'ingTFM.
C'mon man, What? you want to get jacked up like the matrix? Not so easy I'm afraid.