PaulS:
When sending something, anything, to the my Arduino via the serial monitor I constantly get 2 more characters that I sent
You can change what the Serial Monitor appends, using the drop down in the lower right corner of the window.
I thought this was to instruct the serial monitor how to interpret incoming stuff... no wonder it never worked :P. Thanks.
PaulS:
There is never going to be a NULL in the input stream, when the stream comes from the serial monitor.
From what I've seen it seems there is actually is a NULL character at then end of the sent string via the serial monitor. Never mind, I effed up.