is it me or is the whole header kind of crooked? as if someone yanked the ide cable off of it from an angle.

Even someone yanking the IDE cable should not cause the pins to peel up as shown in that photo. If the pin header is soldered properly, the ide cable and its crimped connector should rip completely apart before you could exert enough force to do what that photo shows.

I believe someone from Cambridge said that this problem is caused by an IDE pin header that wasn't perfectly straight to begin with (or perhaps is being warped by the heat of the flow-soldering process?) combined with not enough flowed solder and heat to make the pins truly bond to the solder.