Man, you're going to hit me or something, but I figured it out.
When looking at the main options, I noticed it stated something in the field for the Portal Output Global Variables, that one page (which would be my portal) was not configured to use the default.
After I added the showrandomquotes to the variables list there, it worked. I need to figure out the proper layout to use, but at least things seem to finally work
I'm feeling all embarrassed now for it bieng so obvious, and having wasted your time like that