For testing purposes I disabled the firewall completely. i also forwarded ports on my router, though i'm pretty sure i screwed that up.
That may very well be the problem. You don't need to forward any ports
on your router. I have no idea why you thought that had to be done.
You need to open any firewall application running on 192.168.0.17 (aka GameRig) to allow communication on port 8332. Like, for example, if you were running Windows Firewall, Comodo, etc.
Remove or disable all those forwarding rules you've created on your router. Reboot your router.
Then reboot the Cube and restart mining_proxy.exe.