if a section doesn't exist in your theme, the default settings are taken into account. To change the behaviour of the sorting, you copy the correspdonding section from the sample theme into your theme. Edit themes/sample/theme.php, find// HTML template for title row of the thumbnail view (album title + sort options)
$template_thumb_view_title_row = <<<EOT
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="100%" class="statlink"><h2>{ALBUM_NAME}</h2></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" alt="" /></td>
<td class="sortorder_cell">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td class="sortorder_options">{TITLE}</td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=ta" title="{SORT_TA}"> + </a></span></td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=td" title="{SORT_TD}"> - </a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="sortorder_options">{NAME}</td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=na" title="{SORT_NA}"> + </a></span></td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=nd" title="{SORT_ND}"> - </a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="sortorder_options">{DATE}</td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=da" title="{SORT_DA}"> + </a></span></td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=dd" title="{SORT_DD}"> - </a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="sortorder_options">{POSITION}</td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=pa" title="{SORT_PA}"> + </a></span></td>
<td class="sortorder_options"><span class="statlink"><a href="thumbnails.php?album={AID}&page={PAGE}&sort=pd" title="{SORT_PD}"> - </a></span></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
EOT;
, highlight and copy it. Paste it into themes/hardwired/theme.php into a new line right before?>
To get rid of the sorting options completely, modify the above mentioned code - change it to// HTML template for title row of the thumbnail view (album title + sort options)
$template_thumb_view_title_row = <<<EOT
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="100%" class="statlink"><h2>{ALBUM_NAME}</h2></td>
</tr>
</table>
EOT;
HTH