Lol... I'm rather charmed by your impeccable command of English as well as your eloquent and elucidative posts. Anyway....

My US trainer Blake Skola used a rep scheme of 5,5,8,12 per exercise where he would adjust the weight accordingly. Low reps with heavy poundages and high reps with lighter poundages. That way he got the benefits of both hypertrophy and strength.

Answer to your $500 dollar question, if you want a strength foundation, Mark Rippetoe. If you want hypertrophy/size, there are other viable alternatives. But yes, it is one of the better strength training programs out there. But you don't necessarily have to move on to Madcow's 5 x 5 after that.

This Pyramid workout, where did you get that from? Is it your own plan or you're following another fixed program?

Most strength sports such as powerlifting aren't interested in how many reps can you do with a particular weight most of the time. They want to see how much you can lift with 1 rep, eg. squat/deadlift/bench press records at powerlifting meets. Lifting a particular poundage with just 1-3 reps is a show of strength but it doesn't necessarily induce as much hypertrophy compared to conventional bodybuilding rep ranges. Hence the strength to size graph isn't as linear as most people think.
In order to stimulate optimal hypertrophy, a muscle has to undergo a certain amount of tension under time, which is why bodybuilders do more repetitions to make a set last longer. Obviously if you do just 1-3 reps, your set isn't going to take more than 10 seconds. Go figure.
But there's a certain limit to that. Anything more than a certain number of reps, for example above 15 for most cases and it becomes more of an endurance exercise. Which is why the muscle bulk of long distance runners differ so much from 100m sprinters.
However, the theory of individual muscle fibre composition also applies. Different individuals respond to different rep ranges depending on the ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch fibres. See, nothing in bodybuilding is set in stone. Which is why we need to experiment with our own bodies. Even Madcow once said, his template workout is just that, a template. It's nothing but a guide, but once you know your body better, that program would have outlived its usefulness if you know how to create a program which suits you exactly.

There are no absolutes in bodybuilding. But i'll tell you one thing, those old school bodybuilders knew what they were doing in the 50's. Most of the concepts of old school bodybuilding haven't changed much even till now.

Then it never happened to you, no problem for me. Lol. I have a colored one too but I love black and white/sephia pics. Most of my friendster pictures are also using that effect. I find colored pics boring. And stop calling me Mr Hulk. =)