Somewhere along the line, my Illustrator modifier keys (Shift to constrain to a square, option for smaller intervals, that sort of thing) just stopped working. Apparently this isn't a new or surprising issue, but I can't seem to find a fix that actually works for me. Ideas that didn't work include:

• Turning off secure keyboard entry in Terminal.
• Quitting a version of Office that I don't even have.
  
• Quitting all processes of a "scheduler" type. I went ahead and quit them all, except system ones. Missing Sync listener, Quicksilver, etc etc.
• Standing on my head and praying to Zeus to bring back normal functionality.

Any other ideas?

Your own software programs, that is. Between the Photoshop CS3 Beta, which doesn't seem to have any kind of crash logger (weird for a public beta, I'd think) and the craptacular performance of the non-native CS2 apps, I'm going crazy here. Today Illustrator's Pathfinder tool stopped working. Maybe I shouldn't say "stopped working," I should say "instantly crashes the program which is not the expected behavior." Design folks, have you ever used Illustrator while trying to avoid clicking on the pathfinder tool?

I guess it's time to get Matt to teach me Fireworks until Adobe gets their act together. It's times like this you realize the value of competition, and start to notice the difference between a de facto standard and a monopolizing dominator. When the standard you elected for quality's sake becomes an oppressive dictator, maybe it's time for a revolution.

And by the way... let me be the thousandth person to say: the new icons suck.