diff --git a/llmfoundry/utils/builders.py b/llmfoundry/utils/builders.py
index 943fcdf7dc..16881b860a 100644
--- a/llmfoundry/utils/builders.py
+++ b/llmfoundry/utils/builders.py
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
 from llmfoundry.eval.datasets.in_context_learning_evaluation import \
     get_icl_task_dataloader
 from llmfoundry.tokenizers.tiktoken import TiktokenTokenizerWrapper
-from llmfoundry.utils.config_utils import to_dict_recursive
+from llmfoundry.utils.config_utils import to_dict_recursive, to_list_recursive
 from llmfoundry.utils.registry_utils import construct_from_registry
 from llmfoundry.utils.warnings import VersionedDeprecationWarning
 
@@ -484,7 +484,7 @@ def build_icl_evaluators(
         log.info(f'Extracting ICL task config from path: {icl_tasks}')
         with open(icl_tasks, 'r') as icl_f:
             icl_task_cfg = om.load(icl_f)
-        icl_tasks_list = to_dict_recursive(icl_task_cfg.icl_tasks)
+        icl_tasks_list = to_list_recursive(icl_task_cfg.icl_tasks)
     else:
         icl_tasks_list = icl_tasks
 
diff --git a/llmfoundry/utils/config_utils.py b/llmfoundry/utils/config_utils.py
index db29bcf5c5..97195a8a0f 100644
--- a/llmfoundry/utils/config_utils.py
+++ b/llmfoundry/utils/config_utils.py
@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ def make_dataclass_and_log_config(
     for key in extraneous_keys:
         warnings.warn(
             f'Unused parameter {key} found in cfg. Please check your yaml to ensure this parameter is necessary. Interpreting {key} as a variable for logging purposes. Top-level variables are deprecated and will not be supported in future releases.',
-            DeprecationWarning)
+            category=DeprecationWarning)
         unstructured_config['variables'][key] = unstructured_config.pop(key)
 
     # Create copy of config for logging
diff --git a/scripts/eval/eval.py b/scripts/eval/eval.py
index 3c4f760cf2..2517fdfc24 100644
--- a/scripts/eval/eval.py
+++ b/scripts/eval/eval.py
@@ -255,7 +255,7 @@ def main(cfg: DictConfig) -> Tuple[List[Trainer], pd.DataFrame]:
     run_name = eval_config.run_name if eval_config.run_name else default_run_name
 
     reproducibility.seed_all(eval_config.seed)
-    dist.initialize_dist(get_device(None), timeout=eval_config.dist_timeout)
+    # dist.initialize_dist(get_device(None), timeout=eval_config.dist_timeout)
 
     logging.basicConfig(
         # Example of format string
diff --git a/scripts/eval/yamls/hf_eval.yaml b/scripts/eval/yamls/hf_eval.yaml
index 15e53edcaa..708c871d88 100644
--- a/scripts/eval/yamls/hf_eval.yaml
+++ b/scripts/eval/yamls/hf_eval.yaml
@@ -3,8 +3,11 @@ variables:
   model_name_or_path: EleutherAI/gpt-neo-125m
   # otherwise, write a block for each model you want to test in the `models` section
 
-precision: fp32
-max_seq_len: 1024
+  precision: fp32
+  max_seq_len: 1024
+
+precision: ${variables.precision}
+max_seq_len: ${variables.max_seq_len}
 
 models:
 -