Alright, it took me like an hour, but I got me some s-off goodness
my take-a-ways...
1) If you see "no beer for bear tonight"... don't freak the hell out... think about how our phones work when you flash a bad boot image... pop a good boot image (one that came with your rom) onto your sdcard, load bootloader and flash....
2) You'll probably have to reinstall recovery, use the tools provided in dev to reinstall your recovery
3) wipe your cache, dalvik, factory reset/wipe....
4) try again
5) the "wire trick" isn't a mystery... once the phone says "waiting for device" pop that first contact wire in, press firm (i used a paper clip). Then tap... lift... tap... on GND. You'll know you did it right because the phone will say "waiting for device" after, then immediately (almost) show you the rest of your status messages. You'll know you're done when it tells you you're done, and you see S-Off in hboot...
good luck!