I've been trying to be less of a newb and actually use the histogram which helped a bit on Sunday but I was still a stop under as the images started to look blown out on the back of the camera
Don't worry about what the images look like, just look at the histogram.
hire this guy for an hour.
Unless you're pulling CRTs on their last legs out of a skip Paul then I wouldn't bother getting the man in. I'd start off with a simple calibration by eye by going through the wizard in Adobe Gamma
The one thing I will say is most digitals seem to come with the screen brightness dialed up to crazy levels by default. I always have to turn mine down pretty low to get something that looks right - when I first had my D70 i thought shit looked underexposed on the PC till I clocked that the LCD was way too bright on the factory settings. But then you should, like JB says use the highlight clipping and histogram as the real indicator.
@Aaronator - I'm confused, expose to the left or right for digital?
I'm not convinced by the expose to the right guff, instead trial error and experience should help you get the right exposure or close to it.
As long as you haven't binned highlight detail, which is much more important than shadow detail.
If you're only shooting raw and not jpeg, consider dialling the contrast sharpness and saturation down to get a more realistic histogram for the raw. If you're on Win7 pu won't have adobe gamma, and the in built OS calibration isnt great.
Is shooting tethered an option? It's a big help when you're faffing with lights.
I guess a D3x would also help...
If you're only shooting raw and not jpeg, consider dialling the contrast sharpness and saturation down to get a more realistic histogram for the raw.