no reason to apologize, you're absolutely right
Otherwise yes, as Kano said, for just a FPGA, just add the backup pool in the mining software.
yep, I already did this.. but as getwork pools are becoming rare.. your option to run another proxy still makes (more) sense
and as slush wants pools to adopt stratum, and also advises miners to "simply" use his proxy instead of updating the mining software with stratum.. a lightweight solution would be nicer
for now I hope having more proxies and still some getwork pools will be sufficient for a while.