Funny thing, that more or less answered my question by pointing me in the right direction.
Reading over the new hud_gauges options made sense, and what a great way to make it a lot easier to set up custom HUDs and whatnot, but what I couldn't figure out was how people did it "before" that was an option. Because of the suggestions I got, I figured it out. I was surprised that it was a heck of a lot easier to do than I thought, the "old way", if you will. Makes me appreciate the kind of flexibility hud_gauges will give.
As far as hijacking a thread goes, my apologies for that. I have always tried to post in an existing thread whenever possible rather than starting a new one. And you were right. My question was less about debugging and more about "where do I find blah blah".
Thanks for the help. Making progress but, good lord, this is a mess.......