Minecraft – Why are Endermen walking around the house at day

The rules of how far fire spreads did not change in 1.6, only how fast. The best guide on fire that I've seen is NZPhoenix's:

Introduction

This thread is currently a basic introduction on the physics of fire in Minecraft. To understand how fire works and spreads, it is important to understand that fire itself is a block. When fire spreads, it doesn't actually spread to a flammable block. Instead, it spreads to an air block next to a flammable block. Only certain air blocks are in range of any given flame, and I call these Flammable Air Blocks(FABs).

Spreading

Fire has an area of Flammable Air Blocks(FABs) to which it can spread. The pattern of FABs is 3x3x6. Fire can spread twice as far vertically as it can horizontally.

As stated later on:

Sadly, fire cannot simply be encased to make it safe, the way lava can be.

The only way to prevent fire from spreading to something is to have all air blocks adjacent it to be out of range of the fire. If you can't, then you have to put another block there. (Another flammable block will do, but you have to block all of it's air spaces too.)

Edit: As for why it suddenly spread now, when it's slower, when it didn't in any prior version, is because shortly after a fire is created, it's ability to spread disappears, even if the fire doesn't. Most people don't notice this because the fire goes out soon anyway, but contrary to rumor, Netherrack can spread fire too, just not for long, and by the time people put flammable stuff by it, its chance is over.

What most likely happened is that, with the newest update, this spreading timer was reset because of the changes that Notch made, and your blocks either weren't there when the fire was started or just didn't catch fire by chance.

Notch first disclosed the existence of a new mob in development on his Google+ account in a screenshot. He gave no information other than it was "creepy".

The screenshot was immediately enhanced and posted onto Reddit, where a commenter suggested the name "slender man", a popular meme: Notch liked it and decided to use a variation of that name, "Enderman".

After days of speculation and idea generation on Reddit and elsewhere, Notch decided to use some of the more popular ideas to define what the mob did, and described the Endermen's behavior on his Twitter account:

• The Endermen are peaceful. If you look straight at them, they freeze and look at you. When you look away again, they run fast. And teleport. (Source)
• They run TOWARDS you, not away. So if you happen to look at one, do not look away. (Source)
• (they stop being peaceful if you look straight at them) (Source)

Later, Notch went into great detail about what he is trying to accomplish with the Endermen on his tumblog:

I wanted this to be a mob you only saw in the distance and a mob you’d be afraid of, but when I playtested it, it mostly felt like a regular zombie. There’s was a distinct mismatch between looking creepy and not actually playing creepy. When I made it move faster towards the player when attacking, and deal more damage, it got more difficult and I started respecting it, but it never felt creepy or scary.

So I thought some about what “creepy” actually is, and it’s more about trying to avoid something from happening than it is about actually having that thing happen. If you know something bad can happen if you do the wrong thing, you will start thinking about your actions, and that might make things more scary.