Hi bmccloskey,
I am sorry to hear that you have been experiencing difficulties with the installation of the plugin.
The plugin is not intended as a simple ‘on/off’ plugin. It is intended as a tool for optimization professionals and advanced WordPress users.
The plugin has been improved greatly in the past months. v2.5.0
has several new features such as conditional critical CSS and a Critical CSS quality tester to compare the critical CSS with the full CSS. This last feature will enable you to see if the critical CSS has been configured correctly.
If you are interested to give the plugin another try, I am willing to take a look at your website to see if there is a configuration problem and what you can do to achieve a Google PageSpeed 100 Score.
[ Signature moderated ]