Starting out on drums, advice welcomed!

Get a practice pad and a decent set of sticks and leave them at work, practice rudiments for a few minutes over your lunch break. If you set up a solid practice routine and stick to it every day you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll be able to string together a cohesive beat. Start slow and gradually build up your speed, when it gets easy start working on something more difficult. It sounds like you're more into rock, but learning swing time and jazz techniques will be well worth your time and they're not overly difficult to learn.