I really believe my head was hit by a ton of bricks to do this silly thing .
I still cannot forgive myself.
The 30 days is there to protect you, because someone who steals your wallet could check blockchain.info and start e-mailing exchanges asking for a password reset. 30 days is so if you did get hacked, you have plenty of time to contact burnside (and everyone else) and explain what happened.
If you have a lot of money and a lawyer or doctor friend, getting your account back
immediately is trivial. Just have your lawyer or doctor friend guarantee the statement of ownership. Just write a photo-letter to burnside -- the guarantor must write a declaration "I certify this to be a true likeness of (name)" and sign the back of the letter, and sign and date the photo. A scan or fax will be sufficient, because burnside can then contact the individual independently to verify what you have given him is true. I expect burnside would charge a fee for this service but I can't see any reasonable reason he would decline the process. Then again it isn't exactly standard procedure in the world of bitcoin finance.
p.s. if you can't find a lawyer, traditionally accepted alternates fall along the lines of dentist, judge, police officer, mayor or notary public or above, or the signing officer or president of a bank.
It's not a lot of use proving you're MR X unless burnside had already accepted that MR X owned the account in question. Everyone actually has an identity that they can prove is them - the problem is proving that identity is the one that owns the account.
I'd certainly hope that noone who produced a letter from lawyer, doctor or whatever could take control of MY funds just because they had convincing proof that they had a name. What you refer to is acceptable proof of proving an identity (and only in the same country) - and has nothing to do with determining ownership of an asset where the owner's identity was not previously established. Or do you really believe that knowing a doctor/lawyer (or someone willing to pass themself off as one) is good grounds for taking ownership of things where no identity of the owner had previously been declared?