Build your own computer and get it to handle something simple. If you can slap together a computer or even just put another hard drive in an existing machine, then install some distribution of Linux on it (or a BSD variant -- I'm not here to start a war), you will have a disposable tool for thinking more effectively about modern problems. Linux includes scripting and database tools. Are they all the best? Meh. Are they free? As in speech and beer. Is it obvious? No. Is it eventually more powerful for being less constricted? Yes. If you can already build a box, get more comfortable with shell scripting and regular expressions. Once you can think about common text and data processing problems more effectively, you can solve a lot of common "hard" problems.
Doing crap like this 15 years ago is what got me started down the path of my current career.