Thank you dpham00, I was hoping to avoid having to root my phone because it just seems complicated but I see now that I don't have a choice. I guess I better start looking into rooting.
I rooted the other day after having the phone since the release. Was done in 30 minutes (at most) with a custom rom installed. The phone's so much faster and without all of the verizon bloat on it, it just runs so much smoother. Running ThunderShed-v1.5 with the Imoseyon 6.1 kernel.
Just follow the tutorials and maybe search youtube for some videos (its what i did) and it will all go pretty smoothly.