I stumbled upon some nice bits of misc. WSS code here. A theme changer, a master page that clearly shows the different content placeholders, a log viewer, a contact list with presence information. Gold! Gotdotnet code gallery is getting phased out soon so I might have to update the link:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=5b7f6988-5e72-46df-bb45-ca01ea08825a