LCD won't display

[sail4sea]

I am having trouble getting the LCD to display. It is always lit up with no lettering. I know there is a signal coming off the pins where the lcd is connected to the avr because I took off the lcd and put leds in place of the db4 -db7 bus lines and they blinked, so the avr is doing something. I am using the same model of lcd display as the part seven tutorial, except I opted for the red on black that lady ada had.

Could it be a bad lcd, or did I do something really wrong to it?

[mightyohm]

Do you know if the microcontroller circuit is working at all?

Also, make sure the LCD works at 5V.