So I picked up the through-hole Bus Pirate kit from Fundamental Logic. The Bus Pirate is a neat little device that lets you interface with most serial interfaces (SPI, I2C, RS232, JTAG, 1wire, etc) and is controlled by a simple serial terminal.

Here is the picture of my assembled bus pirate:

Building this was aided with my new PanaVice I picked up at Frys. Night and day from working with a small helping hands, or worse, holding the board by hand.