Yeah, the ads are kinda annoying. Let me address some of your points:
First, the ads are not for making money. OK, I know no one believes me when I write this, but I believe it’s true. If I really thought I could make serious money with a website, I’d’ve signed up for the “other” website wink wink (by the way, it should launch real soon and it looks great 
)
So I don’t plan to sell any ads – but I always welcome donations to keep this project interesting for me (I’m also going to beef up my Amazon wishlist ) Look out for a donate to Segue banner!
If the ads are not for making money, what are they for? Well, I have two ideas: (1) they are to help promote the goods and services of my friends in Taiwan, and the friends of the other insiders at Segue (shh, I haven’t even told them that yet, but it would a little selfish of me if they couldn’t, right? So if you want to advertise on Segue, cozy up to one of the moderators or administrators. Eventually, they will either know how to add a banner into the rotation themselves, or at least it’s their call to suggest a ‘campaign’); (2) they are to draw attention to particular aspects of the website – tips – like the Events Calendar, How to make your forum font larger, how to use the Guanxi F/X Shop, among other things.
Surely you exaggerate a bit 
there are only two pop ups for now and at most, you should see two extra windows. But I wish there was something I could do about. I thought that keeping them the same size would mean that only one ad window would be used. So if you kept that first one open, then other ads would either re-use that window, or not pop up at all. I was wrong.
You have a 30 second window to log-in. This seems like a good amount of time.
About the system logging you out now and then, I’m confused by this. Richard Hartzell used to complain about this in the past, but he’s been quiet about this recently. Perhaps you are going to certain pages (like the Active 100 topics page) that do act funny, even if you are logged in. I have to review those “header templates” – but I’ll only get to this after next week (> 17 Feb)
About the sneaky ad – all the pop ups are supposed to be “sneaky.” In jargon, these are called pop-downs. This is my way of trying to have it both ways: ads that don’t take up forum real estate, but that don’t necessarily get in your way. Now, not all browsers or all browser versions support the “-down” part of the pop-down. THe latest versions of IE and Opera do, but I can’t speak for NS users. Or for older versions.
Let’s suck it in for now. It could be worse – it could be the whole screen! When you mistype a URL in the Philippines, the names.ph nameserver takes over and pops-up a screenwide Flash screen. THAT’s disorienting! Try it and see for yourself(http://www.SirDonaldBradman.ph)
