Apparently the issue was the driver station...
nowhere in the documentation (at least that i could find) did it state that you had to run the driver station program along side the debugger/compiler... (start / all programs / FRC driver station). i was under the impression it would work by just hitting the little arrow button in the compiler when hooked directly to the cRio (little did i know...)
everything works now. got the code working (with a few changes between the tutorial's beta version and the most recent version). it's a very VERY basic program for just tank-drive movement... if any other rookie teams (who are still struggling with the coding in labview) want a copy of our template, just email me (see below) and i'll post a copy on here and / or email it to you.
