Naw, it was not a bad poppet, replaceing just the O-ring on the post took care of it. Being new to kegs (this was my first one) I was looking for hints of operator error, and experaince on reliability of o-rings. (Starting out with a .500 O-ring percentage is kind of alarming, and I was looking to find out that is common or if I was just lucky)
As all have suggested, I am well armed with a collection of o-rings, posts, poppets, and disconnects. As Gordon pointed out, it is easy to ruin a batch of beer, and I would hate the cause of a bad batch to be a 2 dollar or 20 cent part!
Thanks all!