“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”

Why is it every time some computer-app on this laptop rolls out some fancy-dan new version, that supposedly solves all the world’s problems, and I will find incredibly attractive....
....just happens to be when this laptop lobs some stinking hairball at me, announced with “NOW WHAT?” before my wife died.
My wife would come running, and together we’d figger things out.
My Internet-browser is Firefox, recommended to me long ago by a college classmate who is computer-savvy. That guy has since become mad as Hell because I had the awful temerity, unmitigated gall and horrific audacity (cue Sharpton) to dispute his implying I was inferior.
That’s how we were in college, but that was 50 years ago.
I fired up this laptop, then fired up Firefox, intent on doing online banking.
Flash-boom! “Firefox is all-new,” instantly followed by a dour-faced emoticon sobbing the 404 message.
“No Internet” I surmised. It didn’t tell me that; just sobbing dour-face.
Happened before. Drag out Big Guns, namely “guile and cunning.” I’m alone now; no more wifely cheering-section.
I tried “refresh;” again, old dour-face.
I fired up a second Internet tab, engaging a bookmarked web-address.
Again, old dour-face.
My Internet happens to be hard-wired, and the tiny plastic tab on my plug broke off long ago. Sometimes that plug wiggles out — no tab to hold it in.
Wiggle plug back in. Still, old dour-face.
It just so happens my cable modem is also a wireless transmitter, a vestige of my wife having her ‘pyooter in another room.
Turn on wi-fi on this rig.
VIOLA! No more dour-face.
Fiddle banking with wi-fi; figger out hard-wire hairball later.
Can they ever leave well-enough alone?
A fancy-dan new Firefox means figgerin’ out a new interface, which I can usually do, although it wastes time.
This new Firefox was okay, but not incredible.
Sorry I’m not easily impressed.
They promise incredible speed. I’m not playing Candy-Crush in cyberspace. My challenge, I guess, is streaming video. Any increase in speed is unnoticed by me. My streaming video seems same as before.
What I’m doing is streaming railroad video from Cresson, PA. The railroad is the old Pennsy mainline over Allegheny Mountain, now Norfolk Southern. Wait 25 minutes and a train comes, sometimes 10 minutes.
Now YouTube is putting up 89 bazilyun rail streams in cohorts with VirtualRailfan. I still prefer my Cresson rail stream. I play it whenever the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester, WXXI-FM, airs opera, which I can’t stand.
350-pound stringy-haired blonds screaming “Ride of the Valkyries” at the top of their lungs. Stabbings, murders, star-crossed lovers jumping hand-in-hand off sky-high castle parapets into roiling ocean. All to strident yodeling in some ferrin language.
Banking done, I moved on to figgerin’ the hard-wire hairball.
Viola again! Hard-wire Internet is back. I didn’t do anything except shut off wi-fi.
“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
As ‘pyooter-guru at the Mighty Mezz said, “Works, don’t it?”

• “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” is from a 1939 Winston Churchill radio speech: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
The quote has found various iterations, including in movies, and the Simpsons.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her immensely. Best friend I ever had, and after my childhood I sure needed one. She actually liked me.
• “Sharpton” is Al Sharpton.
• The dreaded “404 message” is a computer display one’s Internet browser can’t get the website. It may be due to “no Internet connection,” “site no longer exists,” or “you mistyped the web-address,” etc.
• RE: “What I’m doing is streaming railroad video.....” —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
•“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, originally built from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh in the 1840s. Its greatest challenge at that time was Allegheny Mountain. Pennsy became a major conduit of trade between the nation’s interior and the northeast. Pennsy no longer exists, but its railroad continues.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired 12 years years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)