I'm perhaps more of an extrovert in the same situation, but just apply to everything --- sure you'll fail at some stuff but it's always instructive. The key is realising the difference between a judgement of you and a judgement of how you interview :)

Hell, I got an internship last year by cold-emailing someone from the HN Who's Hiring thread and asking what they were running this year. Just put yourself out there and you'll have no problem.

This is wrong. I don't know a single Rails developer (with or without a degree) who doesn't have more work than they can handle available to them. Sometimes the jobs are more concentrated in certain areas than others, but I personally get several cold calls from recruiters every week, and I have no degree, and I am no rockstar.

When I do eventually move to SF / a tech hub, applying for everything is my plan, if I don't find something before moving.

I also don't know rails, and I'm just now getting into web technologies, trying to decide what to really dig into (between node and rails really) . Is rails really that hot? Just starting out with rails now I feel like I'm really late to the party. I'm mostly interested in Clojure, but that's not exactly the hottest job market.

It's nice to hear that it really is that good though, It's hard to really get a feel from it living so far from any tech hubs, without many developer friends.

Rails developer <: programmer. Contrary to Bay Area belief, most programmers are not, in fact, Rails developers.