I think this is by design in technical approach, bug in business approach . But there is a workaround. You have to set the content type of the page layout you're trying yo create a page from, as the default content type on the needed pages library. Then, when you create a page from  a page layout that is bound to the default content type of the pages library on the site ( yeah I know, there are so many dependencies : P ), you see the default values of the fields on the bound controls. But, as you can guess, this can not be a workaround for two different content types living on the same site, at the same time Since, there can only be ONE default content type in a document library or list.

<Value Type=”DateTime” IncludeTimeValue=”TRUE”><Today /></Value>

your CAML query works just fine

An account failed to log on.

Subject:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: –
Account Domain: –
Logon ID: 0×0

Logon Type: 3

Account For Which Logon Failed:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: username
Account Domain: domainname

Failure Information:
Failure Reason: An Error occured during Logon.
Status: 0xc000006d
Sub Status: 0×0

Process Information:
Caller Process ID: 0×0
Caller Process Name: –

Network Information:
Workstation Name: clientname
Source Network Address: clientip
Source Port: portnumber

Detailed Authentication Information:
Logon Process:
Authentication Package: NTLM
Transited Services: –
Package Name (NTLM only): –
Key Length: 0

This problem has occured with the recent patches ( I do not know which one caused this ). The main reason for this issue is, the system blocks the authentication procedure while resolving the host header given to the web application. To resolve this issue, a modification must be done to the server's registry. You can read the article here.

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate(){    SPSite sc = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID);    ServerContext context = ServerContext.GetContext(sc);    HttpContext currentContext = HttpContext.Current;    HttpContext.Current = null;    UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(context);    UserProfile user = profileManager.GetUserProfile("DOMAIN\userName");    writer.Write(user.PersonalUrl);    HttpContext.Current = currentContext;});

The important part of this code snippet is setting null as value to the current HTTP context while reading from the user profile store. Without this action, you'll get access errors and not be able to reach the profile store.

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{
    SPSite sc = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID);
    foreach (SPUser user in sc.RootWeb.Groups["Portal Owners"].Users)
    {
        Response.Write(user.Name + "<br />");
    }
});

The RunWithElevatedPrivileges method makes the code run with the account which is the application pool identity of the web application the code runs in.

SPSite sc = new SPSite("http://portal");
SPWeb rootWeb = sc.RootWeb;
SPField state = rootWeb.Fields["State"];
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(durum.SchemaXml);
foreach (XmlNode choice in doc.SelectNodes("//CHOICE"))
    Console.WriteLine(choice.InnerText);
sc.Close();