Moskie, congrats on the Bay Area relo!
I was probably as glad to get out, but mostly because of the traffic.
Browsing over a WAN is evil. The few times I've had to fight this I never went anywhere without my list of shortcuts. Oh, and I'd kill the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" option in Folder Options. Whenever possible, browse once.
Which version of Windows are you using? Is it set to view remote scheduled tasks and printers? Check for and delete these keys:
Tasks:
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace\{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}
Printers:
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace\{{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}}
There are other things you can do at the servers and to the net but they can be tough sells. You could also be fighting servers with reduced priority for file sharing. Are they windows or Samba boxes?