Well it's a good thing I stopped the engine building and decided to study the DX9 SDK docs some more. I got started with DirectX 7 but got real serious with version 8 - I just haven't taken version 9 as serious and that's led to some potentially critical oversights. Now that I'm step-by-stepping the documentation I am realizing some very silly development choices I have recently made. For instance:

My shader material class was configured though a separate script - now I will use parameter semantics and annotations to configure the material from within the shader itself. This will greatly simplify tool and material development. It was so obvious!

I'm glad I caught that early enough and...Oh anyway my kid just got home from school and he wants to play chess, that's a rarity. I will crush him with the might of my army!!!! Seriously...I hope he doesn't kick my ass again...

edit. ...he didn't