I quit!  I am at the end of my rope and a very expensive  phone is about to die a most horrible death if I don't stop trying to root it.  Honestly, I don't know where I'm screwing this process up, but no prescribed method I have found for rooting this phone has done anything than stick it in either a TWRP recovery or fastboot loop.  Fortunately, I've been able to restore it each time, but I'm sick of doing the first time setup over and over, so I think I'm just going to leave this one stock.

   If anyone out there reading this has successfully rooted this phone, I would love to know exactly how you did it because if I had hair I'd be tearing it out by now.  Hell, if it works, I might even pay you.  I can't remember the last time I had this much trouble with rooting a phone that wasn't Samsung or LG.