Come to think of it I had the same problem with IE and that pixel.gif taking for ever to load anywhere I went where that image was part of a page. Well, now that IE is totally messed up and I don't use it for much I started using Mozilla and everything loads fast. With IE it would take up to two or three minutes to refresh a page on this site. Now with Mozilla it's allmost instantly. And I found an Aqua skin for Mozilla that is soo cool.
Screenshot! http://martingy2k.no-ip.com/Out-Going/05-01.gif