I think Dive into Python is a great book - but I wouldn't recommend it to biz2hack. At least - not yet. (How to Think like a computer scientist) is a better Python intro book - but if you've got a site in Ruby/Rails - start with that.

Completely Agree though on this: "change the code, save the file, execute the code, repeat"

Here's a first step for you - you've got a website somewhere - getting it running on your local machine. It might be worth installing something like VMWare Player and setting up a linux "virtual machine" - you can download pre-configured ones. (To translate - that basically means your windows computer can pretend to be a linux server - and that pretend server can run all of your programs - without changing anything on your own system)

Regardless of how you do it - let me repeat. Set it up locally and play with it. Change. Save. Test. Repeat.