You might want to look at the desk cradle app in settings>applications>manage>all. Make sure it's running. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be as it is a default setting to run. Also, try having screen brightness set to auto. What if you touch the brightness icon on the desk cradle screen before it goes blank? That do anything? At last I'd try a battery pull, as this can fix loads of things.

 

You said when you plug it in at night.... Do you have a desk cradle, or are you plugging it in?

 

yeah I just realized I don't think he's in the cradle. Big difference. Not sure of the cradle app purpose.
To solve that issue try setting screen time out to always on.

 

If not using a cradle do what cbreze says, or if you are hooked up to a charger when you want the desk cradle ap to run and stay on do the following setting: settings>applications>development>check stay awake. This will keep the display on when hooked up to a charger and the display will still "time off" when not hooked up to a charger.

 

I picked up two a while back for 22.99 ea. on verizons site. Worth it imho.
Not sure about the oem home screen since I've hardly used it but with other home screen launcher apps like launcher pro or go launcher there are options to put an icon on screen or in an on screen folder for almost every setting in the dang thing and fine tuned right to what you want so it's just a button press or two and not a whole deep search to change diff settings. I have several settings set to certain criteria in a folder and it makes it very easy to change stuff quickly while on the fly.

Not directed at you but,I do get a kick out of folks who don't realize the depth of android and the flexible usability of different settings. I came from BB many moons ago and I still read BB forums and see how some BB user will bad mouth android because it takes to many button presses to get to some option while they didn't care to set it up properly in the first place and after using it for only maybe a day. Another one is email. They(BB'ers)are really clueless when it comes to arrival times for email and tout their BB''s as being so fast in that regard while again being clueless as to just how fast android can get your mail to you in a virtual instant as well, probably faster than BB in many instances.
(As I said, this isn't directed at anyone, just my observations using diff platforms and perusing diff forums.)