HTC Droid Eris :: Way To Adjust Brightness Is In Settings Menu?

I did a search and didn't find this specific problem mentioned so here it goes.

The Eris in question (isn't mine but I'm trying to help the owner out), has of course, horrible battery issues. So, first thing I wanted to do was see if there was a built-in power-manager app like on the Motorola Droid. There wasn't so I downloaded one of the many brightness toggle widgets.

The first widget, when clicked brought up a small menu to select brightness. While that menu was up the brightness would change as it should have but would immediately change back to what it was when that menu closed.

After that I looked in options, disabled auto-brightness, and installed a new widget. This one is a simple press to change brightness in increments. When I push the button the brightness changes momentarily and then resets to whatever the slider in the Settings is at. I've tried moving that slider and that setting is what it always defaults to.

Right now the only way to adjust the brightness is in the settings menu and nothing else will work even though auto-brightness is turned off. Is there any way around this? I'd really like to be able to get it so it can be easily adjusted without having to go through so many steps.

EDIT: Playing around with it further, I tapped the widget to go to 100% brightness and of course the screen dimmed back down to 0%. I then went to the settings menu and as soon as I entered the "Sound and Display" menu, the brightness jumped up to what I had set it at with the widget. After that I can hit the Home key or otherwise leave the menu and the brightness will be properly set... until the screen times out. If the screen times out and I wake it up, it's back to 0% brightness.