Posting Has Been Light...
...primarily due to computer problems. My Toshiba laptop has been in and out of the shop twice in the past couple of weeks. The problem was only partially diagnosed the first time as overheating from a dust clog. It took them about a week to "fix" it, I took it home, and then the hard drive died on me a couple of days later. I took it back to the shop and had a new drive installed, took it home again, and it still didn't work.
So I got confused. Maybe they had only given me a new hard drive, not installed it? I removed the hard drive from my computer and installed the one they gave me in a bag. I was able to format that one with an operating system and get it running -- when I got a warning it was about to die! So I figured that must be the old one, after all. So I pulled it out and put the other one back in, meaning to take it back to the shop the next day and have a firm talking-to with those guys. After reinstalling the drive, I switched the computer back on and -- poof! It seems to work just fine.
All I can figure is that they didn't install it quite correctly, which is a scary thought seeing as they're an authorized Toshiba service center, and I'm a guy who really shouldn't be opening things up in order to repair them. I mean, that almost never works out, and usually it's much simpler stuff than computers.
So now I'm working on restoring all my data to the new disk -- which is more challenging than it ought to be, but the good news is I have all the data and I'll get it on there sooner or later.