diff --git a/reqirements.txt b/reqirements.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 379d433..0000000
--- a/reqirements.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
-Babel==1.3
-CairoSVG==1.0.13
-Jinja2==2.7.3
-Mako==1.0.1
-MarkupSafe==0.23
-Pygments==2.0.2
-Pyphen==0.9.1
-Sphinx==1.3.1
-TheScreenlessOffice==0.1
-WeasyPrint==0.23
-alabaster==0.7.3
-cairocffi==0.6
-cffi==0.9.2
-cssselect==0.9.1
-docutils==0.12
-evdev==0.4.7
-html2text==2015.4.14
-html5lib==0.99999
-lxml==3.4.4
-pycparser==2.13
-pytz==2015.2
-pyzmq==14.5.0
-screenless==0.1
-six==1.9.0
-snowballstemmer==1.2.0
-sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.7
-tinycss==0.3
-twitter==1.17.0
diff --git a/screenless/bureau/bureau.py b/screenless/bureau/bureau.py
index d44ec74..aabe4ea 100644
--- a/screenless/bureau/bureau.py
+++ b/screenless/bureau/bureau.py
@@ -109,12 +109,19 @@ class Bureau(object):
         sender.connect("ipc://" + recipient + ".ipc")
         sender.send_string(message)
         # TODO: retry this a few times with a proper sleep/timeout
-        time.sleep(0.5)
-        try:
-            ret = json.loads(sender.recv_string(flags=zmq.NOBLOCK))
-            # TODO: deal with non-json replies
-        except zmq.ZMQError:
-            print("message sent but got no reply...")
+        #time.sleep(0.5)
+        #try:
+        #    ret = json.loads(sender.recv_string(flags=zmq.NOBLOCK))
+        #    # TODO: deal with non-json replies
+        #except zmq.ZMQError:
+        #    print("message sent but got no reply...")
+        #    ret = None
+
+        events = sender.poll(timeout=10000)
+        if events is not 0:
+            ret = json.loads(sender.recv_string())
+        else:
+            print("message sent... timed out after 10 seconds.")
             ret = None
         return ret
 
@@ -244,8 +251,11 @@ class Bureau(object):
                 # catch TypeErrors for case of bogus params
                 try:
                     if ref in self.api:
-                        data = json.loads(data)
-                        ret = self.api[ref](data)
+                        if data:
+                            data = json.loads(data)
+                            ret = json.dumps(self.api[ref](data))
+                        else:
+                            ret = json.dumps(self.api[ref]())
                     else:
                         if data:
                             ret = self.commands[ref](data)
diff --git a/screenless/bureau/kbtest.py b/screenless/bureau/kbtest.py
index df5574d..7854796 100644
--- a/screenless/bureau/kbtest.py
+++ b/screenless/bureau/kbtest.py
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ while True:
     print("sending ", msg[2:])
     ret = None
     trys = 0
-    while (not ret) and (trys < 10):
+    while (not ret) and (trys < 200):
         try:
             ret = send.recv(flags=zmq.NOBLOCK)
             print("got", ret)
@@ -23,5 +23,5 @@ while True:
             trys += 1
             time.sleep(0.05)
     if not ret:
-        print("Error: timeout after 0.5 sec")
+        print("Error: timeout after 10 sec")
         send.close()