Quoting Peter Olson (peabo@???):

> That would be a cool way to do it, but it's a machine where I work, so
> I would have to document it and support it (different from all our
> other machines).
>
> Thanks for the advice though. It could be helpful for others.

Well, if you'd _like_ to try just fixing GRUB before blowing the machine
state away and trying again, documentation suggests these steps:

Boot your choice of live CD.

# mount /dev/sda1/ mnt #substituting whatever /dev node is the root fs
# chroot /mnt
# grub
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 #should output something like (hd0,3)
grub> root (hd0,3)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Reboot, removing the live CD to attempt boot from the root fs.