Ok, messing with flasher (set-rd-flags=no-lifeguard-reset) I got my device to boot.. turns out dnsmasq wouldn't start and since it was mandatory, the lifeguard halts the phone (thanks for that!)

Reason it wouldn't start is because the network interface "lo" was not up.. totally unconfigured..

Checking /etc/networking/interfaces and the file is completely blank!!

Seems the developer mode packages can empty this file.. and without this file lo never comes up and therefore dnsmasq doesn't start and therefore BRICKED

So.. this doesn't on the surface seem like a hardware stability issue.. it looks like a CRAP package in the developer mode set.. I'm debugging the inst scripts now to see how bad they are and why they bombed before correcting the /etc/network/interface file.

Eitherway, it can be recovered.. but its a pain and shouldn't happen.. on the surface it looks like it could happen to anyone, stable N9 or flakey N9