you guys are way ahead of me, man..

Maybe, but your submission, 2 hours later, has got twice the karma but half the comments. Go figure. It's all random.

It's all about the headline. A good headline will generate twice the upvotes in half the time. A lot of great stories never make it to the front page because the headlines are terrible.

And yet we're told not to editorialize, so I "wasn't allowed" to change the headline.

Additionally, the other story was already on the front page when this one was submitted.

Still, who cares.

i don't get how karma works..

Are you serious? (Mostly) Every upvote gives you a point of karma, every downvote takes one from you. Various facilities in HN have a threshold karma requirement, so when you've garnered enough upvotes (and hence karma) these facilities become available to you.

Stories and comments are sorted so that more upvotes push them higher, but they drop over time. Sort order is votes divided some exponential of time, so newer comments/stories appear higher so they have a chance to get noticed, but then drop to the order dictated entirely by votes after a suitable length of time.

All this is in the FAQs, but you said you didn't understand, so I thought I'd provide a high-level summary.

my karma ran over my dogma. it's all good, man..