I'm tending to agree with Laitch. The pin looks like it's been ripped from the plastic body. Moreover, when you desoldered the pin, did you use proper tools? Could you have overheated the chip in the process?
For this modification, it is sufficient to sever the PCB trace leading to the ground island with a utility knife, and leave the pins alone.
P.S. To answer your confusion about the missing post, the text is there but very small in size. If you modify the post, then click on the toolbar icon called "Toggle View", you will see the markup tags. Remove the all tags for "size" and "font" and save the post. For some odd reason, the forum software adds these tags when one copies/pastes text in the edit window. Happens to me all the time. I think its a Mac thing.
