Hmm, if your LED is blinking at 1 Hz, it sounds like you've successfully loaded the Blink sketch onto the board. (By default, I believe it gets loaded with a program that flickers irregularly.) The error you get in the longer trace makes it sound as though the upload is basically working, but an occasional byte doesn't make it. This might be because the communication is somehow flakey, though I'm not sure why that would be. Your board isn't resting on anything conductive is it? (Like the bag it came in?) Try changing the values passed to delay() in the Blink sketch and uploading again. Does the upload ever work (and the frequency of the LED blink change)? What kinds of errors do you get it when it doesn't?