What are the sort of behaviors or activities performed by the switchbar that tend to consume CPU? I'm not encountering this, and I do quite a bit of hanky panky with hiding/showing switchbar icons based on channel activity or lack there of.

http://hawkee.com/snippet/17934/ -- r_idlehide.mrc - Automatically Hide Idle Channels from the Switchbar.

Well. At least I won lunch.
Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like!