XBMC4Xbox

Its really late and this is going to sound crazy, but if you could just confirm for me if the process i am following is correct, I would appreciate it.

here's the scenario real quick: dug out my old xbox, cleaned it up, soft mod, tsop flash, new sata drive, rebuild hdd via hexen, ftp xbmc 3.5.1, ftp emulator, change boot order to start with xbmc. everything is gravy up until this point, then I attempt to "add sources" for apps/emus and utterly fail

I hit a brick wall trying to add sources, I have searched this board and others and read and re-read the wiki online manual repeatedly. For the life of me, I can't seem to make any progress.

here is my understanding of the process, from what the wiki says and what is repeatedly provided as an answer here. Go to programs and then select apps/emus/games. this should open a new menu that will list any apps/emus/games as well as, or if you have none, it should say "add source". you can either select "add source" or click the white button and then select any folders that contain your apps/emus/games. at which point xbmc will then display anything in those folders to be selected.

I was never able to add sources from the Apps/Emulators/Games menus as selected from programs. When apps or emulators or games were clicked on, a menu opened that said "programs" in the top left corner. The menu square remained blank, I wasn't able to even open the view options when clicking the left d-pad. The button press confirmation sounds could be heard when I mashed them in frustration LOL. Also, no amount of waiting populated the menu either.

In my experience in order to populate the apps/emus/games folder I had to go a different, more circuitous route.

I went to programs, then plugins, which displayed a menu that was titled "Programs - plugins" in the top left hand corner of the screen. In this menu was only listed ".." and "addons4xbox Installer", I could click left on the d-pad and it would open up the view options.

I then clicked A on the controller over the "..", which opened an identical menu that was titled "programs", which had the same ".." and "addons4xbox installer". I then again clicked A over the "..", which opened up an identical menu which then had "add source".

I was able to then add a source for apps on my c and f drive as well as emulators and games on the f drive. This THEN populated the menus immediately below programs on the home screen.

...Is this what is expected to add sources? or am I running a crap build of xbmc? or is my diploma from Idiot's college in the mail on its way to me right now?

Not having really understood exactly what you were saying, probably more to do with my state than your wording, but a couple of things to try.
Do you actually have sources for XBMC to see?
Do you have any music or movie files on the HDD that you can test. Remember, these will need to be in folders and then XBMC should be able to see the folders and therefore the content inside them. Look in your XBMC settings and make sure you have "show hidden items" or something like that turned on.
Another thing to try is go into Filemanager and see if you can see the files in there. If the files aren't in there, that is why you can't source them. While the data may be there, the directories to them may have been corrupted. As for your apps, you should find a folder called Apps in what ever drive you put them in, I usually use E drive myself. I use Slayers to build the virgin HDDs myself and it creates a folder in E drive so therefore it appears as E/Apps. If you cannot find your apps in filemanager, I would just create a apps folder in XBMC using filemanger and then FTP your apps into that folder and then re-try sourcing that folder.
Sorry, it's a bit hard to really pin point exactly what the stuff up is. You may have used a number of ways of building the drive that I never use myself. For me it is build the drive, go into XBMC filemanager, edit the folders I want and delete what I don't want and FTP the content to each folder using Filezella. Easy to do because all my content is on my PC including all my games