It has come to my attention that, in ubestbsteppin’s case, the surface-mount DS1307 RTC was placed in the wrong orientation. This causes the microcontroller to stop working, and is our fault since the surface mount components are assembled by us. So if you encountered similar problem (LCD characters are rectangles), check the DS1307 chip — the white dot should e on the lower-left corner (i.e. close to the 32.768kHz crystal). If you see the white dot on the upper right corner (i.e. close to the microcontroller), please contact [email protected]. Thanks.