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.
The docstring for ``host`` indicates that it might contain a port, so this is indeed a valid thing to make part of the ``host`` field.