Interesting. Still keeping an eye on this :)
(And don't worry if it is you making errors [or it might not be], because I'm confused as well. But I'm glad it looks like it's mostly working out.)
For the new issue, that's the salt not being different; I'm not sure that's a major concern. Do different input strings (eg, passwords) give unique results now? It's a little odd that the salt isn't necessarily unique, but as long as there are still many combinations, I imagine it won't be a major problem.

