great, I was able to get it sorted with help from demonmaestro! he's super cool, just like you guys who were willing to help me!
his guide can be found here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=343761.0this was my first trip down this crazy rabbit hole but the community has come through for me once again!
thanks everyone and I'm sure I'll be back with questions!

Glad you got it working!
Yup that's a great guide. It covers just about everything.
The only things I would add to it is:
- Specifying the -gp CLI option. Especially useful if you plan on running more than one instance of the stratum proxy or you are having firewall specific issues so you can specify the port.
- A mention of other common pool settings and CLI options. Like some pools that want to use the -cu and -cp options.
But that's just about it.