How on earth is the "hard" computer considered to be such

Here it loses piece after piece on its way to allowing me to mate it in 30 moves.  It moved way too fast, having well over its initial 10 minutes at the end of the game, instead of taking the time to more carefully consider its moves -- almost like a human

"Hard" is a relative term. You crushed it. It evidently wasn't 
"hard" for you. Well done.

But that was your only game played here so far. We have no idea what your real rating is.

Why don't you try Computer 4- Impossible or play a bunch of humans and let us know how it goes?

I'm class B, FIDE and USCF

Well the first piece it dropped was to the fork.  That doesn't account for:

1. "Sacrificing" a bishop when it already had one en prise
2. Losing a rook (the exchange actually)
3. Allowing it's last bishop to get pinned in such a manner that it was either lost or the computer would be mated

I have to presume the computer would have been much better if it had actually used some of it's time, but in the end it had more time then it started with due to the increment on every move.  This definitely needs to be improved by chess.com