Laffs' wise words are one possibility.
However, my view would be that all what you list are SOE's bugs unfortunately. The player window ranged and melee combat indicators flashing at the same time is technically a bug from SOE as well, but I may be able to work around it. Haven't visited this problem in a long time (you can see that I play no ranger.
).
And regarding the eq2.ini suggestion: I only put options in there which are not accessible via the ingame options. That is not the case for the chat-time display (which I am using myself as well).