Well, my install troubles appear to have been rectified.  Now if I can just get those hours back…

Luckily, I regularly sync my contacts with my Gmail account and I also save the iPhone backup files (which in WINDOWS XP are Located in <DRIVE>/Documents and Settings/<YOURNAME>/Application Data/Apple Computer/MobileSync/Backup

When everything is nice and clean on my iPhone I like to copy this file and store it away somewhere (it’s around 150-200MB).  I rectified the ‘SIM CARD’ message by doing the forced restore and restoring to a previous backup.  I looks like I lost some customization but little else.  I now have to reorganize my home screen(s).  FYI if you restore you will lose any new notes or photos taken since the restore, but luckily that didn’t affect me this time.  I made sure to do a backup right before the upgrade to 2.2