These are not contradictions. The best evidence is that eating cholesterol doesn't matter. It's your diet that controls how much and what kind of cholesterol is generated by your body, and that's what may or may not be a problem.

As I understand it, it hasn't been terribly well demonstrated that simply lowering cholesterol, usually with drugs, actually reduces any risk either; this remains conjecture despite the amount of cholesterol-reducing drugs in use. The "bad" and "good" cholesterols we've heard about seem to be fairly firmly correlated with bad heart health, but causation has not yet been established, unless there's been some fresh research I haven't heard about, which is very possible.

Your body makes more than 60% of the cholesterol that you need daily. 500mg of cholesterol are about 1/3 of what you need every day.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/NCR332.pdf

Your anecdotes don't match the research. Consumption of animal products is not much correlated to serum cholesterol. Serum cholesterol in turn is not much correlated to mortality. If anything it's been found that low levels are of greater concern than high levels.

Cholesterol is not really worth measuring. Triglycerides and insulin levels/sensitivity are maybe worth measuring.

Avoiding egg yolks is stupid. All the vitamins and minerals are in the yolk.