Controling the eip

I am trying to learn about computer security. I picked up the book Shellcoder's 
Handbook (ISBN: 0-7645-4468-3)
I understand the concepts in the beginning but I keep on getting a funny 
result. Basically I wrote a program that had a buffer overflow in it:
I run it and enter A's into the program (it recieves user input)-->hit enter 
and get a segmentation fault/core dump-perfect. When I inspect the stack with 
gdb it over-writes the eip with 0x41414141. 
I then look at the buffer size of the function as well as the address of said 
function (the purpose being to overflow the buffer, control eip to make the 
function iterate again) and the buffer size is 0x24 (36) and the address is 
0x08048405.
I then write a program to translate the hex into ASCII cleanly to insert into 
the buffer:

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
    int i=0;
    char stuffing[44];
    for (i=0; i<=44; i+=4)
    {
        *(long *) &stuffing[i] = 0x08048405;
        puts(stuffing);
    }
}

I then run the program and input the address as ASCII into the buffer as 
follows: 
bash# (./addresstochar;cat) | ./overflow
which doesn't make the program iterate twice and doesn't change eip on 
inspection of the stack. What am I doing wrong here? I tried to be as thorough 
as possible; please forgive my verbosity. Thanks, Zach


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