thanks for the help all!
i ended up extracting the files from the cab of the skin i wanted and just changed all the files then re-compiled it, not the best fix in the world but it is a start, and with a little more tweaking I may even be happy with it! without further adieu however, I'm ready to present my full phone's theme/features, uploaded to my picasa account:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lazyboy0172/MyPhone
the album is mostly to show off to friends what my PPC can do, so don't think I am insulting your intelligence by explaining what Live search does