Can't seem to install D8 this week

I'm getting this error when installing through http://example.com/core/install.php

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table cache_config doesn't exist' in core/lib/Drupal/Core/Database/Connection.php on line 554

Using drush version 6.0-dev & drush si I get:

Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error. [error]
Error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in
/DRUPAL8/core/includes/install.inc, line 257

I'm not sure what it doesn't like from, but it's from something in the settings.php file:
if (isset($current[$index])) {

I decided to diff the default.settings.php & settings.php and realized that somehow this had gotten added:

> $config_directories['active']['path'] = 'config_BKjBrXcZwXamgPv3VxHCybFTfnrQ7LjuJwdme2wgG0w/active';
> $config_directories['staging']['path'] = 'config_BKjBrXcZwXamgPv3VxHCybFTfnrQ7LjuJwdme2wgG0w/staging';

I also keep having to delete files/config_BKjBrXcZwXamgPv3VxHCybFTfnrQ7LjuJwdme2wgG0w as part of attempting to address issues that are coming up with my local install.

This is really frustrating. We gotta get better error messages in place.