So after just over six hours I can say with relative confidence that this issue was resolved (or worked around) by installing resolvconf and thus removing openresolv and therefore the problematic file. 
As @MichaIng had noted, there are some other workarounds posted here that you might want to check out. This was the one that just seemed easy to me.
Thanks again all who helped, I can't thank you enough. This bug was driving me nuts, but I am glad that we found a solution.