Immediately after login, my 12.04 LTS desktop asks for my password for "Authentication is required to change user data"

Solution 1:

You need to set the usernames (local:bob, network:bob) to have the same UID. You would likely want to change the local account as opposed to the network one.

In my setup: I ran id bob to get the AD/network UID. Then I edited /etc/passwd and changed the UID of the local bob account. (This can be dangerous, if you mess up!)

If you have a graphical environment go to Users and Groups -> Click on the user account in question, Advanced Settings, and then change the UID there.

The indicator-applet issue will not be fixed in Ubuntu (even though it is caused by an Ubuntu specific patch): You can see more details here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-messages/+bug/1192300

Solution 2:

Seems to be an issue with messaging indicator.

As an intermediate solution you can remove the messaging indicator with sudo apt-get remove indicator-messages