And I'm confused as hell. Being a console Fan Boy for the past 20+ years I can honestly say that I'm completely out of my element. Are there any good mods for it? How the hell do I install them?

If your confused about the game, mods are not going to make it any better.

If you do not have a lot of experience with Turn Based games, the learning curve can be a little tricky. This can help with the plot and quest lines

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_Nearly_Ultimate_Fallout_Guide

Reading the awesome manual also helps too. Press F1 in game to get a help screen that tells the hotkeys.

Press F1 twice anytime the screen goes full black ~it's an emergent bug of running Fallout on modern versions of DirectX ~it didn't happen back then [with directX5].