Well, after borrowing a lift @ the Chevy dealer that my husband writes service for, one of his techs got the front shaft out. Boy, you guys are right. It took an hour and some busted screwdrivers. Now, it drives perfectly normal. No dancing TOD graph, no noise. It even takes pretty deep throttle to get the 2d block to light up. Without the front axle being pushed by the driveshaft, it seems to be happy again. No noise, no scuffing sounds, no irratic behavor.

Note: When trans & T-case swap was done, the idiot dropped the guts of the front driveshaft all over the garage floor when he pulled the shaft from the axle. He then assembled it with some stuff in backwards and some stuff missing. He then road tested this vehicle on the interstate at highway speeds, even though the front end was being shook apart by a non rotating/binding front driveshaft socket. He brought it to me at work and told me there was some BAD vibration in the front end. Ask me to come out and drive it around the block and let him know if it was doing this before. Duh. I rolled it forward 100 feet in the parking lot and the front end was jumping all over the place, VIOLENTLY! He then confessed that it fell apart on him and he may not have assembled it correctly. Duh, when in doubt, leave it out? This guy is a "World Class" certified GM trans tech? Why would you even leave the garage parking lot with a vehicle behaving like this is beyond my comprehension.
So, out came the driveshaft and down to Denver to a rebuilder it went. I picked it up 3 days later and the guy at the shaft shop couldn't believe it even turned. Parts in backwards, stuff missing, boot destroyed and some minor gouging to the inside of the housing that he had to file to smooth back out. Any worse and I would have had to buy a new shaft.
So, could that little episode have damaged the front axle pinion and did I excelerate that damage with my little off road excursion?