[Verizon Galaxy S 5 General] ngokli:
Recovery Booting... Loop

I was hoping I could fix this without bugging y'all for help, but I'm pretty stuck now! I'm including a lot of detail here, because I know that helps me debug others' issues.

I have a CID 11 G900V, which I just got through a warranty replacement. I have until January 4 to return my old phone. The new one came with the latest updates already on it. I wanted to root so I could restore Google Authenticator data and use cf.lumen, so I thought I'd stick with LL. I followed the instructions in the OP for CID 11 phones a few times. And now I'm stuck in a loop.

The first time through, I got to step 13, and changed a few options in the options.prop file that jrkruse included in VZW_BPB1_ODEX_DEODEX_V9.zip. I kept it odexed, but I did set debloat.rom and mod.rom, and saved the file to my device storage root before flashing the rom. I guess that was a bad idea, as after the phone rebooted, it told me that it has invalid software and I should contact Verizon (I don't remember the exact message).

I could still get into download mode, so I started from scratch, and this time didn't use the modified options.prop. When the phone rebooted, it said "Recovery Booting...", and spent a few seconds showing an droid animation . Rebooted with "Recovery Booting..." again, and again showed the animation for a few seconds. This happened a few times, and I played with pulling the battery or something a couple times, and it finally spent a little longer on the animation and booted properly (eventually taking me to the setup wizard). I'm not sure exactly what I did to make that work.

Here I got lots of google play store and android.process.media has stopped. I saw that FMinMI and DangerRussLee had luck with this:

So I followed the instructions in step 14 to install BusyBox and Safestrap-G900V-4.04_LL_MM.apk.

So I booted into SS, and then I realized that I didn't have the kernel on my phone to get out of SS and back to LL. My computer wasn't recognizing the phone to send the file over while in SS. I wasn't thinking clearly, so I forgot that I could put it onto an SD card (I don't have the SD card or SIM installed while I'm working on the phone). In the instructions, I read "If something goes wrong you can usually get back to SafeStrap by simply rebooting the phone to Download Mode and flashing NI2_stock_kernel.tar.md5", so I flashed that. I'm guessing that didn't hurt, but it didn't help.

So I went back into download mode and started the instructions over. This time, after I flash the combination file in Odin, it goes right into the "Recovery Booting..." loop. I notice that it only loops automatically if it's plugged in (to power or computer). If it's not plugged in, the screen goes blank after a couple seconds of droid animation, and I have to press power to make it happen again.

Note: Both times I hit step 12, I flashed the LL firmware (though I'm not sure why I would choose one or the other)

I can still get into download mode, but I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'm not sure what may be wrong, as I'm not very familiar with hacking phones (though I'm a software engineer, so I can muddle through and figure things out...).

I should have just left rooting for a later time, when I don't have grad school applications looming! But I was so close!!!

Thanks for any help you can offer. In any case, y'all are wonderful people. Hope you have a wonderful new year!