Good news! It's all working well now. I didn't need the pull up resistor. In fact, all I had to do was solder the 4 connections (probably would've saved everyone some time by trying this before posting to the forum, whoops).
Anyway, now that step 1 is complete I need to figure out what to do with it next! If any has seen any cool demos or has suggestions I'd be interested in taking a look. Thanks again for all the assistance!