Thanks for the encouraging words everyone. I changed one minor thing in my playstyle and I think that's what made all the difference on the barrel boards. Had I not had that death on 21-4 I might be sitting on ~1,110,000 right now, but it's in the past and is something I'll have to work on correcting. That death will probably haunt me for a long time as it has put me in a very uncomfortable position on the leaderboard.
I rattled off a bunch of names at the end of my stream and I know I missed several, but thanks to everyone who helped me get to this point. A lot of the current and former top 10 have unknowingly (or in some cases directly) been my greatest teachers.
I still have not yet hit my scoring goal for DK, but I have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do in order to get there. I've endured this much torture already, what's a bit more? I do have a cab and will be transitioning from MAME to cab pretty soon. Special thanks to Jeff for selling me a working board.