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The thing that got me REALLY upset was trying out m right-side USB port afterwards.... It was now dead. Dead dead. A little sniffing brought me a faint, but identifiable "burnt" smell. ARRRGH.

I had that port fail as well. Find a local Mac repair shop and explain to them it's dead. They should be able to order the tiny PCB it sits on and hopefully only need the laptop when the part comes in. Thats what my local store did, and the repair only took 15 minutes. The left port is actually on the logic board directly, I'm glad it didn't fail.