Alright folks, new Steam update today and the client is acting up again. If your having issues following the update, just tag your name with a quick description of the issue for trend analysis.
Looking at the Steam server stats, it hasn't caught up to the update which happened around 4pm their time, but there has been big spikes of activity on the content servers, most likely to due to Orcs must Die and the new Dead Rising game.
There was an Auth error initially when the Firends service was down, but once that reconnected my Steam summy account is performing just fine.
Still, the fact that any component of Steam is struggling is cause to be wary in my book.