doing some more testing, connecting remotely to my lamp server I am successful via ssh, unsuccessful via telnet. Port scanning the computer i see the following the ports available 22 (ssh), 25 (smtp), 53 (domain)
nevermind guys, I am a dork. I went back and slowly walked through all the steps and made sure i didn't have any typos. Lo and behold; in /etc/postfix/main.cf I had this:
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