I rebooted this morning, tried 3.2.0-36, didn't work, rebooted into 3.2.0-36 again, didn't work, rmmod/modprobe iwlwifi, still no go. Rebooted into 3.8-rc5 listed above, wifi immediately started working. Then rebooted into 3.2.0-36 again, which immediately worked.
I rebooted this morning, tried 3.2.0-36, didn't work, rebooted into 3.2.0-36 again, didn't work, rmmod/modprobe iwlwifi, still no go. Rebooted into 3.8-rc5 listed above, wifi immediately started working. Then rebooted into 3.2.0-36 again, which immediately worked.
No cold start above, just reboots.