OK,OK, I should never admit this on a public forum, but right now my face is
ten shades of red, and the problem is solved.

Where the bell finally went off for me was when I tried to ping my OTHER
TCP/IP-bound adapter, namely my Ethernet adapter hooked to my cable modem.
To ping that one of course I had to do it from the internet rather than my
internal network, so I fired up my wife's laptop (on its own independent IP)
and pinged my @home account . Lo and behold it never pinged either, yet I
knew it was on the internet and working even as I was trying the test.

Then of course it hit me - my ZoneAlarm firewall was blocking all pings to
my computer, and of course I forgot to tell it to allow traffic across the
IP's of my internal network adapter!!!  I knew it had to be something
fundamental (probably simple) but I never thought I would be so damn
stupid.... :(  I wasted a day going after a 1 minute fix that I should never
have allowed to happen in the first place...

Anyway, I feel dumb, but at least everything works as advertised now.  Sorry
to have bothered everyone...

Michael

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