allow for simultaneous usage of 2 sets of repositories via a balance json
fix some NPEs caused during dual server work
use gson for json parsing, and Commons IOUtils for DL's  instead of "hacky json parsing" & BufferedReaders in downloadutils startup code
fix issue where console wasn't showing, clean up some logging noticed during testing
swap MD5 & sha1 over to implementations from apache commons, fix shading of commons-codec