madmax4life: Download Reshack, open Aimres.dll in it, find the bitmap of the away message pad, and change it to whatever you want.
Having tons of smilies is fun. Having 16 smilies.. isn’t. I don’t like all the AIM designs anyway.
Yeah, AIM gets worse and worse. There’s too much crap on it.
Fortuneately, there’s other good clients to use, such as Trillian and Miranda IM.