applied remaining tools to run on python 3

When I tried to use the new rpctools in Sideboard, I ran into a few problems, so this pull request fixes them.  In the interest of getting Py3k support officially rolled into Sideboard I'm going to merge this now, but people should feel free/encouraged to leave any comments.
Frank was passing this by keyword argument using the name from the ``six`` documentation, which apparently isn't the actual name.