I feel for ya' - it's a rite of passage. What used to be a simple DD or 3rd party burn with Core2usb, Unetbootin (which Roberts himself had no problem with), wikis moving, and hardware changes in the industry, it can be hard to get started even if you do your due diligence.
So, to better help, what do you really have?
1) What machine model are you wanting to install TC to?
2) What setup do you already have? You mention raspbian -- OR are you really running the X86/64 "Raspberry Pi Desktop", which mimics the arm distro on an X86 box...