Thanks everyone. I've got 30 miles on it since redoing it and it seems to be doing well. Also noticed more noises afterwards, needed to regrease the sleeve bearing in the rear derailleur jockey wheels. I finally have smooth silence!
I've basically got a small fleet of cheap beater bikes that I'm learning to wrench on. One of them came stock with a sealed cartridge and the sheer end user laziness aspect of it really appealed to me. ;-) If the cup and cone gets rough again on this one I'll probably hang onto the parts and swap in a cartridge just for giggles and comparison. Might even get crazy and swap out the crankset completely, just for fun...