Thanks Bob ! Thanks Manfred !
Yep, I have been making the updates from within WP. Was selectively applying them for a while. Not because of distrust of the app-manager this time (which is actually pretty good as those things I think), but because of distrust of the plugins. For example, Bulletproof (the security plugin I favor) added a feature with the most recent update which made sites inaccessible here without a little custom code (which they suggested). Of course I found it out the hard way first, I had a backup so no big deal but it was just extra work [whine out]
Yes, pressing the sync button inside the app manager did the trick

... I waited a bit to post this on purpose to make sure, but yep, it's been nice and quiet for a change... quite lovely...
Thank you,
A very happy grasshopper
