eh, screw it. I'm going to jump in the water and fiddle around with the different ROMs.
I really want to go back to WM5 though... nobody in this thread has said anything about that one so we'll see how it goes. ImCoKeMaN has apparently done it so I'll try as well.
EDIT: Well, it freaked me out there for a second. The bootloader launched but the ROM update said there and sat there was a communications error... I figured I'd let it sit for a few seconds and voila! I now have Alltel WM6 on my phone, OS only. Much thanks!