I got a response back from Jelle Druyts regarding the problem where the left column falls off the page if you narrow the window enough.

He was kind enough to respond with his CSS changes:

/*—– Content Styles —–*/

(…A little later…)

pre {
        overflow-x: scroll;
}

(…A little later…)

#metaContainer {
        border: 1px dashed #d0d0d0;
        background-color: #f0f0f0;
        color: #505050;
        font-size: smaller;
        width: 210px;
        position: absolute;
        top: 0px;
}

Once you apply these to the dasBlog.css file in the Essence theme package, the left column will remain in place!  Excellent!