It's repeatable. May not be noticed on highspeed broadband but is on dialup and slower DSL.
I think it's has something to do with the smilies in the shoutbox.....
Bring up the home board page and wait...........
If there are any smilies in the shout box and someone posts a message there, you'll start to get uploads every minute or so (watch lower left of window).
The strange thing is, you can leave the marlin site (in the same window) and you'll still get the downloads every minute or so.............
Dare you to try....