software-center crashed with IOError in _open(): [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/ryan/.cache/software-center/software-center.log'

re-install attempt provides the following output:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall software-center
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 459 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main software-center amd64 3.1.23.3 [459 kB]
Fetched 459 kB in 2s (209 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 158886 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace software-center 3.1.23.3 (using .../software-center_3.1.23.3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement software-center ...
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Setting up software-center (3.1.23.3) ...
Updating software catalog...this may take a moment.
2011-03-19 13:03:51,913 - softwarecenter.db.update - WARNING - The file: '/usr/share/app-install/desktop/gnome-do.desktop' could not be read correctly. The application associated with this file will not be included in the software catalog. Please consider raising a bug report for this issue with the maintainer of that application
Software catalog update was successful.
Processing triggers for python-central ...

Somehow files under my home directory (specifically the software-manager log) were owned by root, corrected the issue corrected by issuing the following command:
ryan@ryan:/home$ sudo chown -R ryan:ryan ryan
chown: cannot access `ryan/.gvfs': Permission denied

Though I do receive the following output upon manually launching (though it does now launch successfully):

ryan@ryan:/home$ /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/software-center
2011-03-19 13:11:14,236 - softwarecenter.fixme - WARNING - logs to the root logger: '('/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/database.py', 154, 'open')'
2011-03-19 13:11:14,236 - root - WARNING - failed to add sca db Couldn't stat '/home/ryan/.cache/software-center/software-center-agent.db' (No such file or directory)
/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/app.py:1114: Warning: g_object_set_qdata: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
  self.window_main.show_all()
/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/SimpleGtkbuilderApp.py:50: Warning: g_object_set_qdata: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
  gtk.main()
2011-03-19 13:11:18,533 - softwarecenter.app - INFO - software-center-agent finished with status 1

Thank you for taking the time to report this crash and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular crash has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #688682, so is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.