tonyh: Above the text boxes. (Next to "Change message area size")

Click it and it takes you to a Settings page. Scroll down. Near the bottom you will need to put a check mark in "Activate User Smilies"

I only have about 10 smilies now that load each time a text box shows up. (You know? When you click on the "Smiley" above the text box, the ones that show up that you can just click on to have them appear in the text box)

I have DSL. When the newer batches of smilies were added a couple months ago, any page with a text box started taking 15-20 seconds to load! (As opposed to 2-3 seconds for most other Brainking pages)

After I emptied it, I added back in my most frequently used smilies. The ones that I found that slowed things down most significantly were the tip-toeing smiley, and the newer blue smiley that bounces back and forth. (I didn't go much further than that in my experimentation)