It's strange that you say this because these are the results that I am running into. Even if I configure the port as an input it still take forever to start up. Then when it does start I get random characters being injected into the serial output of the problem. If I drop a 4.7k resistor between it and +5V everything works great. I'm just now wondering if I ground it instead what the results would be? I'll have to try that and find out.