where did you hear me saying search engine banning IPs?:?:

IPs are blacklisted. For more information, see http://cbl.abuseat.org/

Make sure you are not hosted on blacklisted server with spam websites.

1) Is it possible to preload image using css? If yes, how?
Here is the format of my css....

body {
background-image: url(g9brk05.gif);
margin-left: 5px;
margin-top: 5px;
...

Good directory..... I really like it....
what abt changing the font in the footer.

Google Picasa is Good one. Give it a try. http://picasa.google.com/linux/

Well search engine's server keep the copy of the site until its spiders find out the updated site....... This depends on the no. of backlinks and how frequently you update your site..... Just keep...

Catched means the copy of your site which is kept at search engine's servers and on the basis of which your site is displayed in search engine results........

It does not affect rankings and pagerank in any way..... Just try to validate http://www.google.com and you will be surprised to see the results...

It does not seem to affect rankings....... I have urls that count to over 90 characters..... But make sure you doesn't spam your url with no. of keywords.....