Thanks Altsheets -- that saved a lot of time and frustration.   I will leave gsoil running now that its synched to block.   

 I believe the following is the correct info for my node:

enode://5aea33dbeacb10ad7df148947e17947c5ebb1ac0fedc7b4d65d01dd61907349830aa24961e2069e07f81ee4635acfd3c4cb4039da4f25d81455d8b7d2c78e4c5@173.254.234.18:39420

Can someone please confirm that an outside connection to node address above works?  Thanks!