I am unable to correctly return the url of an uploaded asset
I found the answer in a similar post here: Image asset url is not being output

My problem was with my Asset Source settings. Now that I think about it, it's obvious: I had no public URL declared for assets from my 'Uploads' source. Giving that a public url fixed the problem.

As I said, it's obvious now, but it'd be nice in the documentation could make even just a small reference to this.