Ok, my package finally arrived with bunches of jumper wires and another arduino (micro this time)! I was also able to get the proper decoupling capacitors. After using proper jumper wires to wire everything up, it all seams to work properly.
So, thank you everyone for your help. I learned quite.
My last question is - on the datasheet for the shift registers that I am using (http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/tpic6b595.pdf), there are 3 ground pins per register. Do I need to put each of these pins to ground or can I just put 1 to ground and call it a day? I just want to make sure I don't fry my registers.