I've been searching (and complaining) for the past week about an apparent short that's been blowing my #1 fuse when I turn the key to the on position (of course because of this the car wouldn't start). After testing everything I could, and tearing half the car apart, I learned the easy way by way of the hard way. I disconnected all the multi-connectors under the hood and started plugging them in one at a time until I found the one that blew the fuse (time to roll your eyes ayeroll, I think you told me to do that in the first place). I then disconnected all the connectors associated with that one till I narrowed it down to the knock sensor. Unplugged the car fires up right away, plug it back in and fzzzzzt. From what I've read here, a simple resistance test is not conclusive evidence of a bad KS, but 1.5M ohms or higher is normal. Mine starts at about 5M and quickly climbs to infinity (set on 20M). Unless someone tells me otherwise I'm going to replace it. I don't understand though why I had no check engine codes, or why this would make the fuse blow instead of simple poor performance. Any ideas?
Hope this helps anyone with similar problems.
BTW thanks to all who gave suggestions.
Jon