yeah, logically it seems pretty easy. the restrictions i force myself to work with is to not modify the PHP code itself so that when it comes time to upgrade, i can do it before i go to bed without having to worry about staying up all night
the problem last time was that i had to put the logic in the template. the post count number was formatted with a comma and the templating system did not know how to handle the check when a post count was greater than 1,000 (because of the comma)
i'll update the postbit template tonight (templates do not upgrade unless you force them to) to see if they added more things to play with.
if i have no luck, then i will look into if there is anything i can do at the plugin level again.