There seems to be an ongoing problem with the blinking of the start bar, especially under Windows 2000. This doesn't occur under earlier versions of Windows, and I don't have 2000 installed at present.
For now I suggest turning off "New activity flashes taskbar icon".
Sometimes, activity will happen in a world, then it will close. When I return, I have a blinking bar (indicating new activity) and no world appearing to have new activity. Can you add a different color to the activity bar to indicate "closed, new activity"?
The dates and times for posts above are shown in Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC).
To show them in your local time you can join the forum, and then set the 'time correction' field in your profile to the number of hours difference between your location and UTC time.