1.) I found out that it's easier to impress people if you have some portfolio that's related to the job you are applying. So write code. Opensource projects or personal projects.
2.) Spend sometime doing #1. Say 6 months? You'll be surprised how much you'll learn in that very little period. I'm in this stage.
3.) Don't bother about how bad the code it for a while. Just write it. It should just work. Should just solve the problem it intends to solve. Doesn't matter if you write in php or ruby. It might even be a simple shell script that helps you setup Adobe AIR projects quickly (http://gist.github.com/306363)
4.) Show it off! Flaunt it everywhere. You'll be surprised how a simple application can be useful to people. ex: I found myself lazy to signup for an invoicing site to create invoices. I wrote http://billmebob.com It's dead simple. But I still see some people use it (a few regular users).
5.) Do variety. Write a shell script, android app, rails app, then hop to tryout Arduino... whatever... it's upto you. just remember _variety_
6.) Once you find out what you like at #5 get back to that and do similar things (say writing android apps).
7.) Stop reading this and write code.
P.S: $100 bet! Try this and you'll enjoy it :)