I figured since you guys are so savvy...

I've got one of those frustrating situations where my cable internet access is on a network run by someone who has absolutely no idea no matter how many Microsoft Windows Monthly magazines he buys.
It took me three months just to get him to stop firewalling my computer from access to the modem (which is unfortunately connected in his bedroom and having spoken with the local ISP they only allow one cable connection per household).

Trying to setup a router back when my internet setup experience was pretty limited resulted in a household war, I mean old guys get kinda paranoid with age I think. When I couldn't set up the router properly first time out it was immediately banned from *his* modem and internet service (even though I pay half the bill...in fact I paid half the bill with no internet access for three damn months because he kept firewalling me and switching off the modem when it was "bed time" and things like that).

So I fell back on tried and true network cards, you can't go wrong and you don't have to learn about remote website dummy-ISP's to feed one connection to multiple computers. You just pop the cards in, connect one computer to the internet, use it for a server and bob's your uncle.

So after some skillful argumentation I managed to slip a network card in my housemate's computer, hooked it up to mine, played around with his internet settings when he wasn't looking and whammo, at last I'm connected via cable and don't have to pay $1/meg for downloads.

Of course he's such a moron he keeps firewalling me, and I have to walk back in there and explain to him *again* that Windows SP2 Firewall is a total marketing wank job that not only does nothing whatsoever in terms of protecting your system, it's actually worse than nothing at all because it messes up your network as well as leaves all the remote desktop ports wide open to the internet. That his half a dozen third party firewalls are much better but need to be setup for the network so they don't treat the network connection like an internet one, because it just blocks everybody but him from the internet. And that you can't activate the crapola SP2 firewall and a third party firewall at the same time, because the SP2 crapola firewall overrides the third party firewall as a MS client and just opens up all your remote desktop ports to the internet, as well as the pair of them blocking everybody else on the network from internet access but you.

I can run a dozen LanGuard scans to show him just how many ports he has wide open to anybody with a $30 software suite and an internet connection, whilst he busily shuts my computer from complete internet access, giggling to himself thinking he's actually increasing his own computer's internet security. Of course then there's his tendancy to install every stupid system clogging pointless program any computer magazine puts on their cd.

All that aside, I think I've finally got him settled on a decent third party firewall that can in fact differentiate between network and internet connections on the same computer. He usually doesn't switch on the SP2 piece of crap (though he keeps reinstalling SP2 itself...I try to keep myself away from sharp instruments when near him).

But over the last three days or so I've been having serious problems loading this site. I mean it takes so long it often times out.
It could be the network settings buried somewhere in my housemate's stupidity...which is going to take about an hour of troubleshooting on his computer when he's not looking and that means if he finds out I'll be blamed for every problem he has on his computer mostly due to doing something stupid for the next six months...so I prefer not to touch his damn system if I can avoid it.
Or it could just mean the server is clogged, this site has these problems occasionally.

So after all that...is anybody else getting loading problems at the site? Or do I have to take a sledgehammer to my housemate's network again?

No, it's not you: we're all having the same problem: it seems that we are having some unusually high traffic on LFnetwork since a couple of days. I know it's annoying but it's only temporary.

moving to the feedback forum ;)

Yeah, its very slow opening up everything, and posting. Annoying but, I can live with it.