Ok, normally I don't complain about hand soldering stuff because normally it's pretty straight forward but this was a lesson I learned years ago come back to haunt me all over again.  Rule #83: Tent the vias beneath your BGAs!  Especially if you hand solder them.  Point is the surface tension of vias far outweighs that of these tiny BGA pads and thus untented (i.e. exposed from behind the solder mask) these bad boys will suck the BGA part toward the via hole.  Point of fact: not much you can do about this except maybe dap some glue over them.  Not great for production (who hand solders a production board anyway?) but definitely a good trick in a pinch.    Proving once again that boards are only as "bad" as I allow them to be.  Lesson learned, board working...Photos uploaded.  Nerdjitsu! (Thanks mer)