...
[13:04:02 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> oh
[13:04:07 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> are you deploying to /uPortal?
[13:04:12 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> or are you using a different context path?
[13:04:26 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> I should have looked at this code first 
[13:04:44 CST(-0600)] <EricDalquist> that exception is because the portlet init was not called