In the past when I installed packages using npm(>=1.0) they would be installed locally, but not anymore.
First I use nvm to install node.js
npm walks up the folder tree until it finds a node_modules or a package.json and uses that as the root. What does npm root print out?
If you mkdir node_modules or create a package.json file, then it'll use the cwd.
EDIT: I won't see updates you post here. For better results, just post everything in the github issue, and let's do the support over there.