all good advice. Since I have been doing all my own stuff on my and my family's vehicles for 25 years now, let me add a few things:
If you plan on being under your Av or other cars, do yourself a one-time favor and buy some heavy-duty ramps from Sears, etc. Next to my daily-use socket wrenches and screw drivers, easily the most used item in my garage over the years. (I have these two-part ramps from Sears where the little ramp plugs into the stand, the stand also makes a great little stand for me when getting a better angle under the hood is required).
As for the Silverado person, and any auto owner that wants a real easy way to drain oil (and not have to worry about goofing the threads on the drain plug when doing oil changes every 3K miles over the course of a 150K lifespan) get a Fram sure drain or a Fumoto Valve (I have the latter -
http://www.fumotovalve.com/ ) and you can even put some high temp hose on the end and direct it straight into the oil catch pan, weight the end of the hose with a large nut. Change the oil on a windy day and you'll understand the wisdom of this.
yes, there will definitely come a time where an oil filter cannot be removed by hand, plus if you change it when hot, that sucker is hot. Do yourself a favor and spend all of $5 or so on the oil filter wrench pictured above, the kind that fits into the indentations on thte top of all filters. I have one for each of my vehicles (motorcycle, Miata and Av have diff sizes).
yes to punching a hole in the bottom of the oil filter, any phillips head will do. Might not be able to do this at the same time as the main drain is open, depends on the size of your catch pan.
one more thing - not mentioned above, but take the oil filler cap off first before draing the oil, flows much faster.