Mr Cragle's Opus - SharePoint 2010 and 2013 User Profile Service Troubleshooting

Before I started as a consultant at Abel Solutions, I was exposed to a limited number of SharePoint farms. The one 2010 environment I had at the office just worked. It wasn't until I started setting up farms for others and troubleshooting broken farms that I had any deep dives into the user profile abyss.
As you know, there are a lot of other posts around the net that can help you troubleshoot. Nearly all of them involve giving the right permissions in active directory and most of the time they are correct. You can't bypass that step or work around it, you have to do it. With the help of many websites, several calls with Microsoft Support and interacting with numerous peers in the field, I give you my opus. The start is near the top, navigate the document by using search on the pdf. There are a lot of interconnected sections and the document is quite large.

* I have worked for about 2 years on this and its still not perfect. Without too much apology I am releasing it now because the information is really useful. I think it is one of the best cumulative troubleshooting guides available right now even though there are some sections of this document that remain unfinished.