well thank you guys so much for the help it is greatly appreiciated. im gonna get some sleep and check back on the situation tomorrow.
The main thing is keeping your wallet.dat safe, do this before messing around any further:
cp /home/alex/.bitcoin/wallet.dat /home/alex/wallet.dat.bak
Then store a copy of wallet.dat.bak somewhere safe - so long as you have the private key contained in that file you haven't lost anything.
One thing i'm obligated to say however: BitInstant can not accept liability for any client or wallet issues as our responsibility is fulfilled once the transaction is sent on the bitcoin network and so any support offered here from myself is purely from me personally and not representative of the company.
With that out of the way, if you're still having issues tomorrow and just can't get it to work, get in touch and i'll assist you in switching to an easier to use wallet.