Okay, now that I've partially gotten over the shock and the site has sped up here's a couple changes that would make it better...

1. Set up the irc channel again and show who's online on the forum page.
2. Change the topics to 'Talk about todays news' 'Ask and Answer security questions' and "Miscellaneous Rantings aka post your stupid **** here'
3. Put the newsgroups in a separate section, sounds like a lot of people don't like them there and it's slowing down the site. The people that want them can probably survive having to click one more time to see them.
4. Don't make anymore comparisons about sharpening sticks.

The actual look of the site doesn't seem so bad now (on my new 17 inch monitor at 1200 res) so I think I can live with that for now.