Hi Kirk,
All you've really said is that your circuit and/or code doesn't work. That's not a lot for anyone to work with. What exactly doesn't work, do you have power? Does the PIC run at all?

Hardware wise you don't seem to have any decoupling caps across the powersupply pins on the PIC. You have 5V and ground connected to pins 11 and 12 but not to 31 and 32 - there's two things to check.

Software wise mackrackit did provide you with one possible (and likely) cause for it not working as you might expect. Several pins are multiplexed between peripheral inside the PIC, like ADC and comparators. You have stuff connected to PortA and the link given in the previous post explains a lot of details about that - if you haven't read it I suggest you do so.

If it still doesn't work, try verifying that the PIC runs. Blink a LED to begin with, work your way up from there.

With more capable devices, such as the 4550 compared to the BasicStamp, there's also more things that needs to be setup properly in order to work properly, that's just the way it is.

Regarding the datasheet I personally think that Microchip produces one of, if not the the best datasheets I've seen. Yes, it's several hundred pages but that's what it takes to cover a device like this.