Got it and thanks for all the help. What the problem was (for folks that are trying similar things) is that I was integrating two different sites and was having sessions initialized before the moodle part got it's session start in (since I am using sessions for things like tracking work orders etc) hence moodle's session start was being ignored. I know the solution I will eventually use. Most likely I will use the moodle part for handling the user logins and then define additional session variables as neededfor the work orders, registrations etc.
General developer forum
Sessions and moodle
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