Finally  got my masternode working. I used both the steemit tutorial and the one here. A couple of things:
1. Your wallet seems to need to be unlocked to get some of the last steps working.
2. It took my a couple of times to realize my transaction was correct, in the wallet it is hard to see what coins are with what address, the transaction address is n/a when type of payments are "Payment to yourself".

I had to actually use the guide here and start the MN through the wallet gui interface to finally get everything working.

Fun little project.

I used Digital Ocean for the VPS (ubuntu 16) and run my Wallet in Azure.

-Capt