I just upgraded my system to the Azure SDK 2.8.1, released earlier today, and also merged the latest code from the BlogEngine.NET master repo into my custom codebase. Do you see where I'm heading?
Once I "solved" the version issue with msshrtmi.dll (a perennial bête noir [not to be confused with this bête noir]), then published the changes, and promptly killed the blog for an hour.
It looks better now, but I'm still having trouble debugging it locally. Tomorrow, after I finish fixing a bug for work, I'll figure out why.