Fix cross-platfrom issues with test suite

[jnmclarty]

Several minor issues related to test suite inhibit a smooth development workflow on Windows.

The commits are labelled appropriately with the changes. They are independent.

Notice the '*' logic is ignored on the windows test suite. That edge case (feature) may or may not work depending on minor release of python. This is an assumption based on upstream usage. Testing for it, is more of a hassle than it's likely worth.

This was tested locally against 2.7, 3.4 and 3.5. I'm counting on travis for the rest.

I have a more strategic version of the normalize function, which I may finish later and send after this is merged.