No I am SOL. I do have a glimmer of light. My ex wife and I broke up 3 months ago and I had given her a mini which I would take to the gigs as well. It still has 2.1.1 on it under my apple account as well. When she gets back this week she said she might listen to the problem and then decide if she would help or not. i offered to buy her a brand new mini
I think what you want to do, if you get it back, is to delete Master Fader off your macbook from within itunes. Empty the trash, and then sync the mini. Hopefully, it will ask you if you want to transfer purchases from the mini. If it doesn't, you might have to look into jailbreaking, which is actually pretty easy.
Oh, first, I'd make damned sure that auto-update wasn't on on the mini. I'd turn wifi off first thing.