Will do, I'll leave that alone. But I did go over the IDE header several times to no avail. Even went so far as to push them to make sure that the pads were in fact making contact with the surface. However, in this process of pushing them, many of them did move, so I had to bend the leads back so that I could attach the cable, but this seemed to keep pulling the pads back, because I'd go over it again with the soldering iron, and they'd move some more. I kept screwing with it, tried to put the cable back on, and one of the leads was a bit too far out, so pushing the cable on, this one lead was bent all the way over. I pushed it back, and it snapped. Someone up there does not want me to go on this road trip. I added a couple more photos of my hack job just to get the bloody thing working.

Still in progress..

Any other thoughts other than the IDE header?