Boy, am I humbled and ashamed. I think I was causing the "funky A's". I didn't notice it until I'd been on three or four threads. Something on my computer got clicked/checked in my wild rambling thru all my software/hardware. I think it's all OK now.
JFYI - I run two anti-virus programs. Norton and Sophos. I just finished doing a COMPLETE system scan with BOTH software programs. They both show ZERO security risks detected.
And, NO I was not doing it to see if everybody was awake. It's just one of those things.