to be honest, when i said everything was soldered to the board, i really meant there a couple things soldered to the board... right now it has the regulator, the PIC, OSC, power switch, headers and i have a diode, resistor and cap on the MCLR pin.. they are connected exactly the way it says too in the march 2007 nuts and volts... mclr goes to the programmer, then there is a diode off of that, with a 4.7kohm resistor to dvv, and a 1uF cap to ground.

it gets so hot so quick, that i havent programmed anything into the pic yet, and because its a plcc, i cant really use my breadboard to try it...

im heading to work though, so if i get a chance, i may look at it some more to see if i can find any shorts on any pins, and make sure i have the mclr stuff on right..