The ballast looks like a phillips style case but the connectors have been cut and the main harness plug is turned 90degrees from phillips ones.
The ground problem is a slow creeping up one were over time it will cause arcing in the case and create resistance causing the cpacitors inside the ballast to not retain full charge and cause flickering ,not right away and not all cars,so it is just preventative maintance for its reliability.
Funny enough my drivers side will flicker occasionally after a hard bump, since then first time about 4 years ago i added a ground and it has never gotten worse.