I didn't see an option to edit my post so I am posting a new one with an update. I started the program, did other things for about 5 minutes, checked and it hadn't loaded, walked away from the system for 30 or so minutes, came back and newsleecher had finished loading (this is what wine-pthread fixed). A subsequent test (uninstall/reinstall, one person claimed it helped for this program under wine) and the app is taking between 15 and 30 minutes (closer to 15 but more than) to startup, compared with 30 seconds w/pthread. Additionally I still can't make secure connection from the program. I don't know of any other windows apps I could try to test wine for ssl (thereby eliminating wine). If someone knows of another application I could put my hands on (ie open source) that does ssl encryption I can try it under wine to determine if the problem is wine or the program. My bet is the program but I would like to be sure. I tried openssl under regular linux and ssl seems to be working.
