On the question of marking things read. If you double click the yellow light bulb on an individual forum, it will mark all posts in that forum as read (until new replies appear). Or, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Mark All Read" link to mark all unread topics in all forums as read.
On the time question, the server is located in the Eastern Time Zone. However, my forum software is set with a default "offset" of -1.0 hours. Thus, when you should see unless you have it set different in your preferences, is central time. (In other words, a post that was made at 12:00 Midnight East Coast Time, would appear to you with a time of 11:00PM (Central Time). Now, if you go into My Stuff >> My Preferences, and scroll down to near the bottom, you will see where you can put in whatever offset you want (remember, the server is on East Coast time, so if you want to see east coast time, then change the offset from -1 to "0".
Basil