okay, so the solution was found by the mechanic. i probly wont be taking anything back to him though. apparently it took him 6.5 hours and an expensive phone call to fix it. he wasnt very clear on what the problem was exactly but im pretty sure he said one of the coil packs was slowly failing. what really sucks is that was the next thing i was goingto change. he also put a used pack in and never called to check if i wanted him to put a new one in. i probly would have had him replace both of them with new ones, but oh well.
all in all, i would have been able to fix it sooner thanks to the help here if it was giving me a missfire code to do the tests with. or if i changed the coil packs instead of the cps (still frusterated that my hanes manual says nothing about a relearn procedure). but the truck now runs smoother and stronger than it has in a long time! thanks for the help and info master