FIIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY!!!!! . . . forcing/tricking the phone/towers worked for me.
I must have tried the date trick over 100 times yesterday with no luck whatsoever.
I even got creative & forced my phone to stick with dates beyond Sept 9th, by setting it to 11:58pm on the 9th & it rolled over to the 10th. Then the 11th, 12th, 13th, etc. all stuck . . . Nothing helped get an update though . . . However, I think the right sequence of things finally worked for me this time around. Here's what I did:
1. Open Dialer and enter *#*#CHECKIN#*#* & let it do its thing. Once complete, you should get a notification reading "Checkin success" and nothing else.
2. Open the Market & download a couple of updates.
3. Open Settings, Uncheck Automatic, Chang the date to 10/3/2010 & it will instantly changed back
4. Immediately press back then select About Phone & checked for updates
Mine finally indicated that I had a 2.2 update ready!
(I got concerned when I saw the DROID eye for a solid 15 minutes, but eventually if finished up & I got a "Congradulations..." message)