Again in the realm of "make of this what you will", but after emailing the address that the pop-up provided, I quickly received an apologetic response and an offer of a conference call to see what was going on.  (That came in overnight, for mid-morning my time [Eastern].)

While testing in advance of that call, I had to write back and tell them that I was able to open both kinds of tables (client detail, as well as firm data) just fine this morning; UI forms also connected properly.  Grabbing some files needing transmission, I was able to go through them without getting (7x per iteration through the script) pop-ups saying "wrong version", too.
  Literally the ONLY thing that changed overnight was that I turned the laptop off for the evening.  I made no changes to whitelist (as they suggested), nor did anything with API.

Maybe the CPU just needed the hovering *threat* of unleashing tech support upon, Sword of Damocles style...



Robert