Thanks for all of the ideas. I realize how critical it is to get the timing just right. At the moment I'm still having issues witht the video syncing up so I'm really not sure what to do. I've tried using the delayMicroseconds(1) but I'm having similar difficulties as before.
I haven't even begun to play around with the vertical blanking interval since right now I'm just trying to get it to display solid lines down, so I know I have the horizontal timing right.
I'm not giving up yet, but I'm kinda stuck 
One of my goals is to have a small protable text generator to use in some other projects. If i can I'd like to make some basic atari-like games as well.