Hi Scott,
I spent some time yesterday trying to figure out why you are getting inconsistent authorization results between using the website and using API calls. I don't have any good threories at this point, but I'll continue today. It looks like you are doing everything right.
Is "Problem retrieving Node data for NodeID: 712." a message you received from SWIS or something your code printed?
To get syntax highlighting, you have to click the "use advanced editor" link to get the editor with the bigger toolbar. On that toolbar, there is a button that looks like >>. Click this and a menu will pop up with the syntax highlighting options.