Fresh SharePoint 2010 Install - "An unexpected error has occurred" and EventID 8306.

Greetings!

I've never encountered this error on a fresh SharePoint 2010 installation, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.  I set up a three-server farm with SQL, Application, and a Web Front End.  All software is at the required version level and patch level.

- I installed my SSL certification in the MMC for Certificates.
- Went into Central Administration and set up a Web Application to use SSL.  
- Edited the bindings for port 443 in IIS to use the new SSL certificate.
- Created a site collection under the new web application.
- Site collection = team site.
- Central Administration > User Policy > added my account with Full Control to the web application.

So, when I browse to my site (https://sharepoint.com/test) I get the following error, on an otherwise blank white page:

An unexpected error has occurred.

{0}: If you have permission, you can use this page to temporarily close Web Parts or remove personal settings. For more information, contact your site administrator.

I tried going to the Web Part Maintenance Page, and nothing happened.  
I then edited the web.config to allow WSS_Medium trust level and then ran products and technology wizard again (since it also included an IISRESET).

Nothing changed.

So I went looking through the Application server logs and found this EventID 8306:

"An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: The server was unable to process the request due to an internal error.  For more information about the error, either turn on IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults (either from ServiceBehaviorAttribute or from the <serviceDebug> configuration behavior) on the server in order to send the exception information back to the client, or turn on tracing as per the Microsoft.NET Framework 3.0 SDK documentation and inspect the server trace logs..."

This is followed by a Warning (EventID 2138):

"The SharePoint Health Analyzer detected a condition requiring your attention.  The Security Token Service is not available.  The Security Token Service is not issuing tokens.  The service could be malfunctioning or in a bad state.  Administrator should try to restart the Security Token Service on the boxes where it is not issuing tokens.  If problem persists, further troubleshooting may be available in the KB article.  For more information about this rule, see (broken Microsoft URL).

I read here (http://sensoft2000-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2010/10/error-security-token-service-is-not.html) to go check out the "SharePoint Web Services Root" application pool in IIS (inetmgr) and make sure it was started (did an IISRESET) and while it was running, that didn't solve the error, either.

Before I end up breaking something, I wanted to ask if any of the experts here have run into the issue before.  Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

SPK