Finally, my reply:
XXXManager,
"true" or "true;" did not seem to make a difference, but I put the semicolon anyway.
DX,
ONLOAD="window.defaultStatus='YOUR MESSAGE'" does not work for what I want to do. It places "YOUR MESSAGE" in the status bar AND it does not interfere with the mouseover on the sponsor links, however, it does not place "YOUR MESSAGE" when I mouseover a blind link on my site. I could use mouseover code on all my blind links, but there must be a better way that uses up less bandwidth than that.
XXXManager,
Your code works!

Thanks!!!
For some reason it does not work if I take out the OrigStatusBar and CurrentStatusBar variables and set the status bar directly. Any idea why?