Once I fixed an errant ground wire and starting getting serial data again, I was able to determine the signal with the GPS on inside of the window sill was probably causing the failed checksums. Moving the GPS to the outside of the window gave these results:
Acquired Data
Lat/Long(10^-6 deg): 5155xx, -17xx Fix age: 263ms.
Lat/Long(float): 51.55xx, -0.17xx Fix age: 315ms.
Date(ddmmyy): 210109 Time(hhmmsscc): 20062100 Fix age: 365ms.
Date: 1/21/2009 Time: 20:6:21.0 Fix age: 49ms.
Alt(cm): -210 Course(10^-6 deg): 1350 Speed(knots): 0
Alt(float): -2.0999 Course(float): 13.5000
Speed (knots): 0.0000 (mph): 0.0000 (mps): 0.0000 (kmph): 0.0000
Stats: characters: 33236 sentences: 181 failed checksum: 6
The signal is still not great (the altitude is off by almost 100 meters) but I will wait till its stops raining before taking the test rig outside. Anyway, I am happy that your library is working fine.