Thanks for the feedback guys
I'm slowly working on my site's look... I'll be getting to redoing the buttons once my one visually inclined admin gets off his duff... Hopefully he'll be able to make some buttons that'll fit the top bar better. Last tine I did anything look-color wise beyond basic blacks and greys, my one moderator threatened to spank me... so I let the visual arts guys do that for me. Saves me the indignity.
As for the avatar... It works nicely I find with smaller sized avatars and even no avatar. The preview pic is from my own forums where my members happen to like reeeaally big avatars. I've so far managed to get the other admins to agree on reducing the avy size from 300 in width down to 250... I'm pushing for a 200 max width myself. I do have to keep my member's likes in mind though

I did try to design this postbit with any sized avatar in mind. The big avatars is actualy what inspired me to put the avy in it's own column without anything above or below it.
Another change I'm thinking of doing to the postbit is adding a small image border around the entire postbit, and also centering the signature, or moving it to a right-aligned position. I may just cut out the AIM/ICQ icons completely for now too.