I don't think he's laughing at himself anymore, or us.

Hope he's making some kind of progress.

Gonna surmise here that he may be in over his head with us, we think we know what we're doing but this situation would seem to indicate otherwise despite our best efforts.

He/we would seem to be at the point where the OP will have to experience an epiphany, divine intervention or an "AHA" moment to move forward, maybe all three.

Many here would have already hit the brute force option, but being the old steel nail that it is, results could be catastrophic which may be the way it has to be here but we don't know, yet.