I'm not quite where you guys are. I'm a formerly weak fat guy, now weak skinny guy. Dumbbell bench at 6 reps 70% BW. (Don't have a barbell or gym membership). Got a used set of Powerblock dumbbells, bench, and stand.
Been focusing mostly on just keeping the weight off. Now that I'm starting to get the hang of that, been trying to lift more regularly and making modest progress. Focusing more on strength rather than size, so I'm doing lower reps, aiming for 8-6-4 when pyramiding up. According to this article, that focuses more on myofibrillar hypertrophy. Winter is coming, and so are the holidays. So we'll see where this all goes.
www.defrancostraining.com/articles/38-articles/52-why-all-muscle-was-not-created-equal.html
I think that's a good way to go if you want strength. If you want general fitness and weight loss, something like Pete Kemme "Functional Fitness" might work. Or perhaps a combination of the two. I just do weights and running because it's what I know, but I should probably work in some high intensity stuff too. I'm just too lazy. I think if I had more time I would do something requiring skill, like a pick-up game of basketball, or maybe jazz dance or karate.
As for weights, when you look at the body, it's really only meant to move in certain ways, and these correspond to all the basic ST exercises. You can pick something up, which corresponds to deadlifts, squats, power cleans, etc. You can push something away, that's the presses--bench and shoulder, and optionally leg . You can pull something in, that's the rows and pulls. If you just do those with heavy weights, you're guaranteed to become strong. You only need 5-10 exercises. Everything else is frosting on the cake.
Also, you mentioned pyramiding, you should try pyramiding down as well as up. Once you've reached your max weight and can't do more than 1 rep or none at that weight, reduce weight by the same or smaller increments you increased it, and try to maintain the same 3-5 reps for each set coming down. When you can only do 1-2, or none, then reduce weight again.
So for example my bench:
75 lbs warm-up for a couple of sets, high reps.
125 lbs, still warming up, maybe two sets of 5-8 reps
175 lbs, starting to feel good resistance, 3-5 reps, maybe two sets, or whenever I feel adequately prepared for close to max weight.
225 lbs (my current max with no spotter), however many I can do. When I can only do one, I reduce to 215, then 195, then 175, then 125 to finish.
You'll get results fast. If you're doing a bunch of complementary exercises though, like flies for the bench press, you need to save a little bit for later.