Luckily I didn't fry anything, as I haven't received the diode yet!
That being said, somebody pointed out to me the following comment from the sparkfun product page:
by SteveMajor +1.8 | Feb 19, 2009 at 2:59pm 0
This device works beautifully. We hooked it up--indoors with no window for giggles--and it immediately got a 3d fix from 5 satellites with the on-board patch antenna alone. It should work even better outside. Some things not in the data sheet--tie both enable and RX to 3.3 V and the output is defaulted to 4800 baud 8,n,1. Our senior design group is very happy with this module. Another group is also having success with the EM-406A module.
So what should I do about this? try the diode thing, or just tie E/D to Rx to 3.3V? I really just need the gps to spit out data, nothing fancy.