Good point. I don't have my arduinos on my ATM, but if I remember correctly, I did indeed hook up the +5v's, the GNDs, and then I also did rx-tx and tx-rx. I will try to lower the baudrate when I get back to this at home, but the second reply reminded me of an issue as well - i don't think I saw any code running through the serial monitor at all when the 5v's where not connected.