It's hard to read an entire wall of text like the OP made, it make me lazy to read the whole thing. OP, sometime come up with something preceded by your experience and your knowledge is also required, but when you can get your question across clearly (not with a wall of text) then it's much better to get a lot of community attention. By the way, welcome to the community.
So the question is really what places should I start reading in the forums groupings? Should I just go top to bottom and read all the pinned messages and posts? I mean I think I just answers my question for that.. that is what I will do.
I've told other users (newbie) before because they also feel like they don't know what to do on this forum. You have to have an interest and you also have to be willing to spend a lot of time learning about your interest. No baby can run after he is born a few days, weeks or months. If there were, then it was children disguised as babies.
What I'm trying to say is that it takes time and a process to learn everything, but it's never recommended that you do it all at once as it's very unlikely to make you understand quickly. There are stage that you have to go through with different level each period. If you learn one thing today, you must learn something else tomorrow.
Don't despair, do it with passion. Remember, there are thousands of newbie who currently never get a single merit even if they have been here for years with thousands of posts. But you are new and have got 1 merit, if you do it right as directed then you will get more to reach member rank, full member and also above rank.