[Catman51]

Wow, you have a lot of reading on the forums to do!
While in today themes, there is a second tab at the bottom that says items.
Click on that, it will show everything that is installed that has a today plug-in, and if you were using the today screen instead of sense, you could put those items on it.
Look for HTC Sense and uncheck it. When you click okay, you will be at a very blank today screen, that shows the theme you are using. There are sight where you can download .tsk files and put them on your storage card to use as themes. You may want to search for that as a few are gone.
Pick something that you like, I don't think Dark Crimson has a .tsk file, so find something similar and when you choose it, the background for your start menu will change to it.
Then go back to today items, and recheck sense.