Ask HN: How did you learn MetaSploit?

I've spent like 20 hours banging my head against the wall over the last few weekends.

I started with www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed. It "teaches" by example instead of concepts, though. I read a good portion of it for what it is worth but it's not worth much.

Then I tried "Mastering MetaSploit" but they don't include a target machine disk image so you can't follow along. Of course you don't realize that until you're some way through the book and have stretched metasploitable to its breaking point.

People joke about how MetaSploit is so easy to use that it's for script kiddies but I'm putting serious effort into learning it and getting nowhere.