Bad luck mate. You really should give EQMOD a go - its SOOO much easier than fiddling around with the hand controller. Once you're polar aligned (i use Alignmaster and it takes me about 20mins tops to get within 15 arcsecs of the SCP) but there are other software tools out there i believe), you can sync to any object of your choosing using Stellarium. Too easy.
So anyway, while you were tucked in bed I was getting
deep sky first light with my new Vixen 
(yep - i know - i've taken the Vixen Kool-Aid now too
)