"UPTIME IS THE GAME, DOWNTIME IS THE NAME" today marks the end of scheduled maintenance—two guys with two weeks to kill and a few hundred hours later, we're finally [mostly] done.
page loads/image downloads should be dramatically faster. until we hit 1gbps, at least. to all of my wonderful and ungrateful users: "you're welcome."
(note: there are still a few other things i'll be working on so expect intermittent downtime)
ps: thanks so much to mvb for all of the help and support.