welp... all of those theories didn't hold true. No Countdown Timer, no remote anywhere, no screen blanker. It just magically stopped happening after i managed to get to emphatic and quit it that one time. I did nothing else as i was very sure to be methodical when taking the steps to figure it out.

Strange eh?? Now i'm sorta hoping it'll happen again just so i can figure this out. I HATE when computers just do seemingly random things.