Ok guys, sorry I have been gone for a couple days but life happens and there isn't much we can do about it. Looks like I missed a pretty lively discussion in my absence.
Today I have upgraded my Arduino IDE to version to 1.8.1. First off I do have a few sketches that do work and when I verified them with the new version they appear to still work. As far as the problem I was having with the original sketch that started this string I continue to suffer the same problems but to be fair over the last few days I have not had any time to work on it.