Update... not that anyone REALLY cares, I'm sure.

Either the /usr directory name change back from the .avi name didn't take, because as soon as I left my house to run an errand, the phone started rebooting. It would boot to the stand-by screen, and the part where the signal, batt status and time didn't shouw anything. Then, about 30 seconds later, it would reboot. It was laggy as hell, couldn't even open xTerm quick enough to check that the /usr directory had indeed been changed properly.

Or, it may have been the mce.ini file which I was experimenting with... But I uploaded the same changes to it after I re-flashed it, and it seems stable.

Point of the lesson? Be careful what you change, and where. If you're a n00b, read, re-read, and then read one more time, before you change stuff. In my case, I had a good feeling the phone might "brick" when I was experimenting with the mce.ini file, but I also had a pretty good idea on how to flash.

The best part though? I re-flashed the phone in a FRY's electronics parking lot after buying a USB-MicroUSB cable, since I didn't have the one that came with the phone in my pick-up truck.

I LOVE being able to fix a screw-up like that on "the road", as it were.