Weird HM power input wiring?

My HM 4.1 was already built when i purchased it, and I'm trying to smooth things out as best as possible.

Ralph, I'm sure you'll see this post, but I'm getting noise issues once again on my probe lines, and I'm wanting to check all my wiring and perform the two mods recommended -- RC filters (already done) and white wire mod. So the white wire mod is up next, and I wanna make sure the existing wiring here makes sense, and that when I perform this mod, that I'm not about to kill my HeaterMeter.

Check out my wiring here. Red (presumably hot) goes into the bottom right, ground to the top.

Is this right? I feel like when i was researching this a while back, that I found that my wiring was different from everyone else's. I'm seeing some 4.1 boards on Google Images that have all 3 pads filled in.

From what I can tell in the guide found here, I'm going to flip the board over, and cut the 4 traces running into the unused pad found in my picture, then solder and run a wire from that cut+unused pad over to the board location found in the guide.

However, i don't wanna kill this thing, so can anyone verify my power input wiring and confirm my plan I outlined?

Your plan doesnt make a lot of sense, because it looks like your ground wire isn't on that pad now anyway. If you cut those traces to isolate that solder pad (like in the white wire mod instructions) then run the white wire you are running a wire to a completely isolated connection which will do nothing.
Where does the ground from the power jack connect to?

See that's what I was thinking.

Why would my wiring differ, or why would the guide indicate using a different pad? As I said above, the hot goes to the bottom right pad in my pic, black/ground goes to the top. I feel like my wiring is jacked, but at the same time, the damn thing runs so I'm confused as to what differs about my setup.

On the power jack, the pin at the back is the +12v, the pin in front of that (where you would cut the trace for the white wire mod) is the Gnd, the pin that is off to the side is the switched leg of the power jack, which is jumpered to ground by the traces on the HM board.

The reason for cutting the traces in the "white wire mod" is to isolate the ground coming in on the power jack, then re-route the ground over to that other location. Since you do not have the power jack installed I dont think you should need to worry about cutting those traces, but I don't think you should have the ground wire connected on the other power pin (switched leg) as it "appears" to be in your pic. I would think you should run the ground from your power jack all the way over to the pin shown in the "white wire mod" instructions, which I think is the center pin on the OKI +5V regulator.....

Followed your suggestion and it boots up fine running GND directly to the pin, so that worked from a technical standpoint. Will do further testing in coming days.