Magically delicious!

> The blue wire goes to the idiot light, but its presence is absolutely
> critical to the charging system.

This turned out to be the culprit. I didn't have it hooked up to begin with
because the hole marked D where the blue wire should've hooked up to was
empty, there was no spade terminal to clip the wire to. Well, upon what had
to be my 12th inspection, I noticed that the new alternator had a second
large cable connector (as in, threaded stud with a nut just like the stud
for the starter cable) that i had previously been ignoring. This large stud
is marked D+, and had a tiny spade terminal sticking out of the back side of
it where I hadn't noticed before. Hooked it up, jumped it, and it works
beautifully.

Thank you very much, Randolph!

Mike