Tie rods and alignment

Threw on a new 2.5" lift and JBA UCA's last week, and went in for an alignment yesterday. Local shop got the numbers pretty bang on on paper, but of course, there's always something. Steering wheel was ever so slightly crooked...no big deal I'm thinking. An excuse to buy some new wrenches and make the fine adjustment to the tie rods myself. So I picked up a nice Milwaukee 10" wrench, but I can't get the damn nuts to budge. Not enough leverage? I'm thinking of picking up a piece of pipe to fit over the handle.

Anyway, as I'm struggling trying to get things going, I start noticing a few things are off. First, one of the alignment cams is pointing downward. From what I understand, this shouldn't really matter, as the cams are symmetrical. So to appease the OCD, I imagine that if I get the middle mark on the cam from pointing 45 degrees downward to the left, to 45 degrees up to the left it should result in the same bolt position and alignment?


Naturally, I start checking the torque on all the bolts and I found they all needed about 1/8th turn to get to 135 ftlbs, from what I can imagine was about 100 ftlbs. Not the end of the world but I'm still trying to give this shop the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, as I'm trying to have another go at the tie rods, I notice there's quite a bit of grease around the drivers side boot and sure enough she looks torn. I had it in for an alignment about 2 months ago, 25k service and new rim install at the dealership a few weeks ago, and nothing was mentioned to me. Likewise when I was installing the suspension last week, I didn't notice anything torn either. I don't want to blame anything on the shop just because I noticed it now, but what does it even take to rip the boot like that? I haven't done any wheeling lately, had no impacts otherwise either. The boot is severed quite evenly all the way around making what just looks like rubber bowl of grease. The only way I can imagine having done that is when I was moving the wheel hub around during the suspension install, but there's no way it resulted in enough flex on the boot to rip it...or did it?


Passenger side for comparison:


So all in all, is it the shop or is it just a coincidence? I hate relying on other people to get things done right, so I'd much rather get that piece of pipe to adjust the tie rods, flip the alignment cam, and replace the boot on my own, but I'd love to know what you guys think.