In working with group policies, I've run into some frustrating test conditions where the policies I set just weren't getting set on the target computers.

Checking into the event log, the issue appears to be that the clock on my vmware machine was too far out of sync with the time on the WolfTech domain controllers for a session to be established, and so the workstation service principal couldn't log in and get the list of gpo's it should apply.

Wolftech syncs it's time via NTP to time.ncsu.edu .   I've put in a request with provisioning to sync the ESX servers with time.ncsu.edu.  I'll run a request through Harry to the CAB to explicitly sync the ACSAD domain to time.ncsu.edu as well, as long as we're tugging on things.