but why is "http://myIP/?firmver" not returning 0.1.0 like it should, that part I'm not understanding...
Because you are asking if httpRequest ("") contains ?firmver. It doesn't, because httpRequest only contains nothing.
The code you removed did more than just print c. It also appended c onto the end of httpRequest, so that httpRequest contained "", "h", "ht", "htt", "http", ... , "http://yourIP/?firmver".
At some point, then, httpRequest did contain ?firmver.
As it is now, it never does.