so, i'm starting the reinstall.
i'd like to be back up by the morning, so i can get on with things.
i've otherwise spent the evening catching up on the vlogs.
i don't know why the updates turned on all of a sudden, but i'm suspecting it had to do with turning the task scheduler back on, which i turned on to get the event log working again. i didn't learn anything useful from the event log, really. so, i'm leaning towards just turning that back off.
but, what i'm going to do, after i copy the install from early november back, is just inspect the install directory. are there glaring differences? recent changes? what the fuck?