my dock is locked to the right side and where you would normally change it under dock preferences its all grayed out. Does anyone have any clue how to change this. I'm running a new macbook pro with 10.8.1.
Do you use an administrator account? (For non-admin account, even dock location could be limited by admins)
Is your Mac in an AD domain? (same - some AD policies can dictate a lot)
Try OnyX for running some cleaning and maintenance on your system;
Free from http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx