At the risk of offending the forum gods, I'll make one last post here.

I initially posted here under the assumption that the problem was malware, and in fact by posting here I was more hoping for a "it's a virus" or "its not a virus" response. The issue no longer appears to be a malware problem, and I have posted at What the Tech and explained the problem in detail. I suppose we can just close this thread, and if the problem is fixed but proves to have a malware component, I'll make a new thread here with updated information.

At any rate, thank you and keep on being awesome.