think i found the problem. there are hidden world of warcraft windows messing with me. i shut everything down and then re-opened two wow windows and ran this:

<Hotkey Ctrl R>
<RenameWin "World of Warcraft" a>
<RenameWin "World of Warcraft" b>
<RenameWin "World of Warcraft" c>
<RenameWin "World of Warcraft" d>
<RenameWin "World of Warcraft" e>

and sure enough, the two visible windows turned into c and d.