WalT wrote:
My system is perfectly fine,
Then you are *extremely* lucky. The steps you described taking had the potential to cause big problems. Don't push your luck. Don't do that again.
and everything works smoothly & I'm smooth sailing getting even deeper into Ruby! I'm even going to read & watch all the Ruby on Rails books/tutorials that I can find including lynda.com.
Please do yourself a favor. Don't do anything with Ruby or Rails just yet. I know it's exciting and you want to get going, but first learn the basics of your OS -- things like setting environment variables. You'll be a lot happier for it.
If you can't explain something to an old lady then you don't understand it. Plain & simple.
I can explain it to an old lady. So can Jeff. So can Hassan. But this is a forum for Rails issues, not basic Windows support. If you need basic Windows support (and Walt, you certainly do), then please take it to a more appropriate forum.
And no, like I said before I'm not a programmer, I'm a web developer.
Sorry, but no. Web development is programming. You need to understand that.
Proud to be a layman! I actually like Ruby cos its syntax is more like plain old English!
I do too. And I'm very proud to be a self-taught programmer. But I didn't get that way by asking for advice and then ignoring it, which is unfortunately what you have done in this thread.
Like I said before, I cannot take wrong advice. Not all advice is good advice...
All advice given to you in this thread was good advice.
One must learn to separate the good from the bad.
Yes. And you have a lot of learning to do. 
I took the advise that led me to the right direction, and ignored the other advice which wasn't helpful to me. That's my call to make, not yours.
Except that by the outcome you reported, you ignored advice that you should have taken. You didn't take the good and ignore the bad; rather, you took half the good, ignored the other half, and made up some very bad stuff.
I hate to say things like this, but at this point you clearly don't even know enough to see where you went wrong, which means you're not yet qualified to decide what's good advice and what isn't.
I found the solution (and not a shortcut) to my problem and that's what counts - nothing you say will change anything.
You can claim it's a solution. But it's not. It's a poor shortcut. This is not about what I say. It's about generally accepted principles that you are choosing to ignore. I promise you, your life will be easier if you learn some basics.
You can stay being a programmer and talk your programming jargon which you don't even understand half of it, if that turns you on - that's your choice, not mine.
I understand everything I posted, or I wouldn't have posted it. If you don't understand it, then please ask questions and do research.
Now, let me get on with my happy learning and stop wasting my time replying to you. I'm done with my chat here (or, should I say 'terminated my electronic conversation')...
Good luck with that attitude. I'm trying to help you learn the things you need to, but until you actually listen, I think you're beyond help in this regard.
Look, I sympathize. I'm a smart, cocky fellow, and I've often had a hard time listening to the voice of experience. But you know what? Every time I've done so, it's been useful. Don't like it? That's life.
Best,
