So, the Intellisense option that was driving me nuts has a resolution. I was looking at my toolbar and I saw a strange icon glowing. I hovered over it and what did I see? "Toggle between suggestion and standard completion mode".
What a completely useless and crappy feature. It has been driving me absolutely nuts for days. Expletives flying, etc.
Anyway, I must have turned it on looking for a key command. CTRL + ALT + SPACE activates, in case you want to turn something on that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye. Go ahead, makes for an interesting day. Reminiscent of the old IDE days where you basically had notepad to code in, but much worse.
Crap feature that is, well, crap.