notes

So, in case someone stumbles across this or I happen to forget.....

The Upstart/init script also needs to have the /etc/default/transmission-daemon file as well, because that references where all your transmission stuff IS....

transmission-daemon_default

# defaults for transmission-daemon
# sourced by /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon

# Change to 0 to disable daemon
ENABLE_DAEMON=1

# This directory stores some runtime information, like torrent files 
# and links to the config file, which itself can be found in 
# /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json
CONFIG_DIR="/home/{YOUR_USER_NAME_GOES_HERE}/.config/transmission-daemon"

# Default options for daemon, see transmission-daemon(1) for more options
OPTIONS="--config-dir $CONFIG_DIR"

# (optional) extra options to start-stop-daemon
START_STOP_OPTIONS="--iosched idle --nicelevel 10 --pidfile /var/run/transmission-daemon.pid --make-pidfile"

TransmissionUpstart.conf

description "Transmission daemon for user"

start on (filesystem and net-device-up IFACE=lo)
stop on runlevel [!2345]

# give time to send info to trackers
kill timeout 30

expect fork
respawn

script
    USER=root
    test -f /etc/default/transmission-daemon && . /etc/default/transmission-daemon
    test "$ENABLE_DAEMON" != "0" || exit 0
    exec start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid $USER --exec /usr/bin/transmission-daemon -- $OPTIONS
end script