The tempest log above is the initial failure due to "resize to zero disk flavor is not allowed". Later I tried with more disk manually, and it still failed during migration. Please see below for more information.
nicira@htb-1n-eng-dhcp8:/opt/stack/horizon$ nova show tj-test-resize 
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property                             | Value                                                          |
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| OS-DCF:diskConfig                    | MANUAL                                                         |
| OS-EXT-AZ:availability_zone          | nova                                                           |
| OS-EXT-STS:power_state               | 1                                                              |
| OS-EXT-STS:task_state                | -                                                              |
| OS-EXT-STS:vm_state                  | active                                                         |
| OS-SRV-USG:launched_at               | 2016-03-18T23:57:51.000000                                     |
| OS-SRV-USG:terminated_at             | -                                                              |
| accessIPv4                           |                                                                |
| accessIPv6                           |                                                                |
| config_drive                         |                                                                |
| created                              | 2016-03-18T23:57:36Z                                           |
| flavor                               | m1.nano (42)                                                   |
| hostId                               | 74913a7ca3224c89c2db0e23a8e8c19f658768fb2a47f26240836120       |
| id                                   | 6a657875-fe4f-405d-9a50-d96d6cd1cd0a                           |
| image                                | cirros-0.3.3-x86_64-ESX (4939d898-cc68-432b-8067-ebfd2af82bb7) |
| key_name                             | -                                                              |
| metadata                             | {}                                                             |
| name                                 | tj-test-resize                                                 |
| net1 network                         | 192.168.1.26                                                   |
| os-extended-volumes:volumes_attached | []                                                             |
| progress                             | 0                                                              |
| security_groups                      | default                                                        |
| status                               | ACTIVE                                                         |
| tenant_id                            | e625475de6344113a6d22461402ead92                               |
| updated                              | 2016-03-18T23:57:51Z                                           |
| user_id                              | 049b6c47f3694a1ca7d3afceffbf3228                               |
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+


then i resize it to a flavor with more ram and nothing different

nicira@htb-1n-eng-dhcp8:/opt/stack/horizon$ nova flavor-list
+----+-----------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+
| ID | Name      | Memory_MB | Disk | Ephemeral | Swap | VCPUs | RXTX_Factor | Is_Public |
+----+-----------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+
| 1  | m1.tiny   | 512       | 1    | 0         |      | 1     | 1.0         | True      |
| 2  | m1.small  | 2048      | 20   | 0         |      | 1     | 1.0         | True      |
| 3  | m1.medium | 4096      | 40   | 0         |      | 2     | 1.0         | True      |
| 4  | m1.large  | 8192      | 80   | 0         |      | 4     | 1.0         | True      |
| 42 | m1.nano   | 64        | 0    | 0         |      | 1     | 1.0         | True      |
| 5  | m1.xlarge | 16384     | 160  | 0         |      | 8     | 1.0         | True      |
| 84 | m1.micro  | 128       | 0    | 0         |      | 1     | 1.0         | True      |
+----+-----------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+


nicira@htb-1n-eng-dhcp8:/opt/stack/horizon$ nova resize --poll tj-test-resize m1.micro

Server resizing... 67% complete
Error resizing server
ERROR (InstanceInErrorState): <type 'NoneType'> can't be decoded

but i do not see any errors in n-cpu.log

the last thing i see it the 67% error but the instance is in error state

2016-03-19 00:01:55.225 ^[[00;32mDEBUG nova.virt.vmwareapi.vmops [^[[01;36mreq-1c57a8b0-1447-4734-96c6-642bf761cb0c ^[[00;36mdemo demo^[[00;32m] ^[[01;35m[instance: 6a657875-fe4f-405d-9a50-d96d6cd1cd0a] ^[[00;32mUpdating instance '6a657875-fe4f-405d-9a50-d96d6cd1cd0a' progress to 67^[[00m ^[[00;33mfrom (pid=3702) _update_instance_progress /opt/stack/nova/nova/virt/vmwareapi/vmops.py:1225^[[00m