well, its been a long and difficult pause (stupid treo750..), but finally got my phone back from the Samsung service center. Turns out, it was the speaker that was faulty. once they replaced that, everything works fine. got it back, and just flashed 3.1.0! Smooth as butter, Sho!
Only one issue, though, so far.. It's Siyah, so I tried downloading ExTweaks on the phone. I kept getting "error downloading purchase. DB-BPA-09"
I tried all sorts of suggestions from various sites, including clearing data from Google Services Framework and rebooting, unsyncing Gmail then resyncing Gmail.. The only thing that worked was going to play.google.com, and searching for ExTweaks from the web, and then clicking install. I chose the device, and then waited. Went onto the Play store on the S2 and clicked install. this time it worked. Weird, but oh well.
random - just saw about Google Now.. site is up, but no download link.. looks like we wait for someone with a nexus running 4.1 to post the apk