Wallet synced at block 16061.  Thank you for the advice BrianB. I'm looking forward to my coins maturing tomorrow so that I can start minting. 

By the way, I'm launching the wallet using this batch file.
I'm not too familiar with the -checklevel and -checkblocks commands but I thought it was worth giving them a try.  One of the functions of -checklevel is to verify that the transactions found in each block are on the main chain. The -checkblocks command determines how far back to look at previous blocks and verify that they are valid when starting up (default is 2500). It seems like using these commands might help to prevent accidentally ending up on the wrong fork. At least this is my understanding of how it works.  I'm still a noob, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Here is my address for the giveaway: 5csSoqd9q37Ktfn6XW3pZsq228x7yAfaqA