Yea, the second I thought of the socket I thought of the cheap kind with the REALLY skinny pins designed to do nothing more than to break and frustrate you. Breadboards don't need sockets. They are sockets. Large, interconnecting sockets.
the only socket i use on the breadbord is an homemade 5 pin conector.I use it to conect my PIC programer to my PIC whithout having to unplug the pic (i use my swish knife to get it off the easyest)
as for 555 timers i simply grab it whit my figers an pull it out.I never even bent a pin on an 555 timer chip (exsept en i knocked one of the desk and exsedentaly spept on it but i bent the pind back and it worked ok)
havning IC sokets on an bread bord is an dumb idea to me.These made for PCBs so that you an replace ICs on them