Well, actually I've improved the situation somewhat. I didn't notice it before but apparently my mouse got away from me logging in and the auto reconnect was checked. So I unchecked it.

But what I also did, even though I'm running a version 10 yahoo I set the reversion protocol back to 16.  This seems to  have improved the connection somewhat.

Even though it's not 100% it's working fairly decent for the time being.