Holster swing and a miss?

[spolct]

I came into a Galco Cop Slide for $30 shipped that I figured I'd take a chance on. It arrived today and after about an hour of foolin with it and an unloaded M&P 9c, I'm not sure how it's going to work out.

1. The thumb break - I'm not one of those guys in the habit of thumb-sweeping the side on the draw. My thumb wants to go straight into combat-grip position. I've played with pushing the thumb break out on the draw and while it's not difficult or slow, I'm just not used to it. All my other holsters are open-top and I'm leery of putting this one into rotation without tons of practice. I know it was probably silly to even attempt the thumb break style, but I figured at the price it was worth a shot. It has a retention screw so in theory I could hack the thing up to remove the thumb break bits, but that wouldn't seem to leave much material left. Plus I'm not sure I want to destroy this thing when someone else may be able to use it as it is. Leaving it unsnapped could work, but then the snaps rattle around a bit and also leaves that extra material loose which increases the footprint. The snap goes together fairly easily and I could see that with my luck it gets snapped on its own as I go throughout the day.

2. High riding + shorter barrel = a tad floppy. Just for grins I ran the belt around front of the holster instead of the 'traditional' behind and it made a huge difference. The only problem with this is that it takes a beltloop out of play in most of the shorts/pants I own. This causes the belt to ride up during the draw and/or a bit of pant sagging. The latter isn't too big of a deal, but the former can cause a longer draw.

Any tips to making this work that I haven't thought of yet?