HELP ME. HELP YOU, HELP ME, HELP YOURSELF! Help w/ Steem Miner Needed -- Near Concussion From Banging Head Against Wall!

There are all types of fantastic, comprehensive, easy to follow tutorials on how to mine Steem on a Linux box, and I used the outstanding tutorial provided by @joseph (Mining Steem w/ Linux for Dummies) along with bits and pieces from other tutorials to fill in the blanks, but I have been banging my head against the wall the past two days. Installing, failing, coming close, wiping, reinstalling......

I have a 22 vCPU Intel Haswell VM running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS(amd64 xenial image). I already have a wifkey from my user acct, so I do not generate one w/ "suggest_brain_key" referenced in several tutorials (that will be for later miners I create w/o creating a steem user account first). Regardless, I use the active private key from my account (I have actually tried both my active key and the key spit out by "suggest_brain_key"); however, this may have nothing to do with why I have a concussion from banging my head against the fuc&(ng wall.

When its show time and I enter the ./steemd --rpc-endpoint --seed-node="seed.steemed.net:2001" command or the ./steemd --rpc-endpoint command, I am hit with the following:

maybe_found != nullptr: Unable to find Object
    {"id":"2.20.0"}
    th_a  index.hpp:111 get
529626ms th_a       database.cpp:102              open                 ] data_dir: /home/mjmorningwood/steem/programs/steemd/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain 
529626ms th_a       application.cpp:352           startup              ] 10 assert_exception: Assert Exception
maybe_found != nullptr: Unable to find Object
    {"id":"2.20.0"}
    th_a  index.hpp:111 get
rethrow
    {"data_dir":"/home/mjmorningwood/steem/programs/steemd/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain"}
    th_a  database.cpp:102 open
529626ms th_a       application.cpp:879           startup              ] 10 assert_exception: Assert Exception
maybe_found != nullptr: Unable to find Object
    {"id":"2.20.0"}
    th_a  index.hpp:111 get
rethrow
    {"data_dir":"/home/mjmorningwood/steem/programs/steemd/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain"}
    th_a  database.cpp:102 open
rethrow
    {}
    th_a  application.cpp:352 startup
529626ms th_a       main.cpp:196                  main                 ] Exiting with error:
10 assert_exception: Assert Exception
maybe_found != nullptr: Unable to find Object
    {"id":"2.20.0"}
    th_a  index.hpp:111 get
rethrow
    {"data_dir":"/home/mjmorningwood/steem/programs/steemd/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain"}
    th_a  database.cpp:102 open
rethrow
    {}
    th_a  application.cpp:352 startup

Before I lose consciensness, could someone please just point me in the right direction. I realize it has to do with the graphene /db/index.hpp. But I cannot figure out what object "id" :"2.20.0" refers to. The first person who can get my VM up and mining will receive 10% of the gross amount mined by that machine over a 5 day period of the geniuses choosing. So, HELP ME, HELP YOU, HELP ME TO HELP YOURSELF! Thanks in advance, I do appreciate it! Feel free to contact me via the e-mail address listed below.

MJ Morningwood

[email protected]