Thank you all for the suggestions/help/directions...
I think the bug report as mentioned by crashtest fixed my problem - well, on my Linux box anyway. Windows NT still doesn't work but at least I have a clue as to what to look for. (Yes, I added the patch but I think it may have to do with some of the other ActiveState modules I have loaded. That's for another day.)
I replaced my code with the snippet in Re^2: MORE NTLM (node_id=443032) and, along with the bug fix, it works great!
Thanks again everyone for trying and being patient with me as a new poster to the Monks.