I can't get mine working properly... it's getting some error about 'quark-hash' not being found or some such & not loading headers... just going to take it down instead of leaving that shell up

I had the same problem until I looked around in Neisklar's Github. Git clone this
https://github.com/Neisklar/quarkcoin-hash-python , then python setup.py install, then the pool should work.
Thanks to everyone testing, seems to run good so far, weirdly my yacpool had some hiccups this morning, investigating.