Totally understand the frustration. I've been there- really.
The thing about all of this is that it is all community driven. Solidoodle themselves has made no efforts to contribute in the way of walkthroughs or documentation, so you have a rag-tag group of guys trying to help that are talented, but definitely not technical writers or customer support specialists - myself included.
That said, the great thing about the wiki and forum are that they are LIVING. if it frustrated you that it was not mentioned that the hex file was a hidden file, then edit the wiki and add it in there, save others the headache, pay it forward.
3D printing, at least at the hobbyist level, is not plug and play. My Solidoodle is very reliable now, but frustrating in the beginning. This was as much about me learning what things mean and how to fix them as it was me modifying the Solidoodle itself (which is pretty close to stock, actually) This is frustrating now, but when you remember that you paid under a grand for a printer than can beat a $20k Stratasys when tuned properly, it becomes pretty cool.
Anyway, about your problem - a few things that would help:
A list of exactly what you changed in lawsy's firmware
You can home the axes - can you move them manually?
Did you change anything in Slic3r?
Did you change anything in RH?
Slicing with slic3r/skeinforge would not be a problem here.
Troubleshooting tips:
0.) take a walk, relax. i've been there before, you'll drive yourself nuts if you don't take a break from it
1.) get manual jogging working (X/Y/Z arrows)
2.) run some old g-code that has worked in the past