Jumping for Joy

ITS ALIVE!!! I am actually speechless and do not know what to write. A warning, this is a rambling narrative. There will be a more technical entry Saturday or Sunday. So I will start from the beginning of the day's work. I connected the Arduino to the Xbee. I then took my multimeter and tested the connections. I have forgotten that my 5 to 3.3 voltage regulator has its pins reversed. Luckily I did not fry my xBee. I went to Xctu and programmed to Xbee radios. As I was about the test them I thought that I have done something inccorrect. I checked the settings again and in fact I had configured the Xbees exactly the same so they would have never communicated to each other. This project I only configured the PAN ID (ATID), the source address (ATMY), and the destination low -which source address to send the message to (ATDL). I had originally set the MY and the DL to the same numbers on both when they should have been the opposite. Quick fix, and I was on my way. I connected everything and it still did not work. I quickly checked my code and remembered I have never changed the baud rate on the Xbee. Going back to XCtu I tried to change the baud rate. One would think this would be simple. Yet there is no baud rate on the read out or anything showing 9600 which is the default. After consulting the owners manual I discovered it is in the serial interfacing section called interface data rate. I gave it the value four which is 19200 baud and set it to both radios. Changing both MAX and the Arduino since they were set to 14400 I decided to give it another try. However I had to relocate first. I hastily packed everything up and moved along. When I unpacked I had broken my voltage regulator. Distraught I came up with the solution to use the FTDI board I use to configure the Xbees because it has a 3.3 volt output. I plug it in run MAX and it works. Until I notice it is reading it through the Arduino Mini USB programmer. Disconnect that and...it stops working. I play with the settings on MAX serial and it gets worse. Restart MAX and...it works. Restart it again and it works again! So we have a wireless orientation controller. There are still some issues with the data I need to hammer out as the orientation can be flawed.
Below are pictures of a screen capture and of the horrid breadboard monster I created.