Pyrrhic victory

For those of you keeping score, the nuclear option worked on my desktop: I reinstalled the OS and all the apps that Nibs uses, and now it behaves nicely. I was up until 4. I now recall that when I replaced the NIC at a supportnik's suggestion (grr), I never did install the driver; the system didn't ask me to and the NIC work fine until I rebooted. I have installed it now.