Thank you very much for your time and effort. I will certainly use the Code-Tags from now on. I really hate using the user-interface event creation, so this is extremely helpful.
I think that my problem, when trying to code the event without the user interface, was simply that I was not adding the $w.onReady( function () { } that you placed in you example above. Is the $w.onReady( function () { } required each time you want to add an event to the code?
As for the problem with the user-interface generated event, basically every time I would come back to the project, the onItemReady event would be forgotten by the system, and I would have to create a new onItemReady event through the user interface in order for it to function.
All that to say, I really appreciate your coded, non-user-interface solution and it is working beautifully, and thank you for the tips on forum etiquette and code snippets.