After running OS X for about 3 days straight, things suddently stopped working...the eject/volume/contrast keys don't function or display their transparent overlay... Sleep/Restart/Shut Down/Log Out doesn't work... Go->Connect to Server brings up the window, but connections sit with a progressbar and do nothing (when I can easily connect to the fileserver with another OS X machine running the same version)..
I did a sudo shutdown now in the termianl, and when it dropped me back at the login screen, I clicked shut down, then powered it back up, and logged in again.
The problems persisted, so I ran Disk Util and fixed permissions..rebooted..same thing.
What's going on?