after reinstalling i figured i would try whatever i could to get this issue to stop. i installed the new NVInstaller .41 and also installed all of the software updates except for the time machine one.
no instead of the gray screen my desktop just freezes. weird thing is that i can run the wow installer (without freezing) in safe mode.

i think i might try another mack_kernel tonight. anyone else out there have any suggestions? or maybe someone out there has a similar setup that could tell me what has worked for them.