I've finally reorganized my server. Previously, I used a company called LinuxVDS that provides a virtual Linux box with full root privileges for just $15/month, with 2gig of storage and lots of bandwidh. It worked great for me until a few months ago when, in response to Red Hat's new support policies, they forced all their users over to Debian.
I tried to set up the Debian box by myself but quickly ran into trouble with mailman. So I got help from good friends and spent about $500 (!) trying to configure the system, but I was never able to get Mailman to work properly on the system. Worse, LinuxVDS became super unreliable after the price cuts and switch to Debian, with outages several times a week.
So I checked in with Scott, who recommended Dreamhost, and I've now simplified my server environment and traded in endless configurability for simple, reliable services. Dreamhost is amazingly flexible though, letting you install things like Movable Type quite easily.
At the same time, I decided to change the way I deal with my mail archives. I archived 38,000 mail messages to HTML, using a program called Mhon-Arc, and then indexed the whole thing with a program called Namazu. Now I can easily search all my mail from the last few years.
Better yet, I just received a Gmail trial account that I'm sending a copy of all my mail to. I think I'll use Gmail for searching all my new mail.
Let's see how things go!