Hey Wade,
I meant the actual API - the Assemblies are wrappers over the API. Try downloading the API here: http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iControl/F5Downloads.html
At the top of the page are the APIs, below them are the wrappers.
What happens with the assemblies is that they make API calls and catch Exceptions, so "Not Initialized" is the assembly's way of saying "there was an Exception, I caught it, but we can't connect". By downloading the core API and building one of those samples, there won't be anything to catch the exception and you can see what's actually going on.
Hope that helps!
Don.