Just as an update to anyone looking at this thread later on down the road: I haven't made much more progress on the ECM malfunctioning. I tried getting a "new" used ECM from ecmoutlet. com and was very unimpressed with them. Long story short they said they had the right one in stock, I paid for it, didn't get any feedback from them. Two weeks later I call and ask the status and they said they were getting it, two weeks after that (and no communication) I had them cancel my order. Back to square 1.

The other day I ran across an idea to hook up a switch to a fuse controlling power to the ECM to cycle it and hopefully have it start normally. I tried all the fuses inside the cab that I thought would affect the ECM and didn't have any that reset the CEL. I didn't try the EFI fuse in the engine bay, I think that will be my next course of action.

I did narrow down which plug into the ECM causes it to reset. Looking at it in the cab, if I unplug the furthest plug to the right, let it sit for 10sec and plug it back in, I can start the car normally. Hoping this leads me to a place where I could wire in a switch to reset it every time before I start the car? We'll see.