I should have been more patient. The seems promising for reaching out to another rooted user to zip up a directory or two affected folks to overwrite. I don't blame Stericson for the 8.0 bug like all the haters on Market. He's obviously putting a lot of effort into helping fix the issue. We all knew the risks when we rooted a phone that doesn't have proper recovery.
So how's my NON Rooted Commando M100 replacement, you ask?
It's not that bad. It's a bit comforting to know I'm back in VZ's good guys column;-)
Now that I know this phone and Androids better in general, it was kinda fun setting it up from scratch.
-Deleted every widget and shortcut from stock launcher first
-Loaded Go Launcher and went to work gettting it like it was before the crash thru Play Store pushes of apps.
-All said and done it's a bit slower, but not much. The only place I can see the Bloat is in App Drawer and App Killer's list;-(
I miss Wifi Tethering, ScreenshotER, and Titanium.
But I'm finding workarounds for the Tethering will keep my going on the road.
-I had purchased Easy Tether USB ($10) before I rooted and it works great (faster than the Wifi Root;-) so I'm good there. This works great with all and any of my Win7, Unbuntu 10.4+, and MacOSx pcs.
-Open Garden has a NEW Open Garden that tethers over BlueTooth. I've had success in tethering to my Xoom (must use mobile Firefox with proxy add-on and only Firefox can connect http: and https

and my Mac OSX Lion (total connectivity), but it's troublesome with Win7 b/c I can only get DUN working with generic Bluetooth Peripheral Drivers.
-FoxFi and PdaNet Tablet are two apps that together do a better (for now) Bluetooth solution than Open Garden. I've had success in tethering to my Xoom (totally connectivity when you use FoxFi Bluetooth option on phone and PdaNet Tablet app on the tablet), but it's troublesome with Win7 b/c I can only get DUN working with generic Bluetooth Peripheral Drivers.