I'll ask about #1

For #2, my team is on the West Coast.. we usually don't push our updates til the middle of our day. The content teams (1040, etc) push updates every day - so you probably got one of those.   Give it a shot around 12 PST. If it'll be later than that I'll reply here.  

Note, the issue you are experiencing should be resolved, I believe, but we're still looking into one issue where for some people Status isn't propagating across network to workstations.