Hi Xavora
1. As I was spending 4-6 hours a week just moderating spam messages, I closed registration on December 10th and have been manually setting up new accounts since by reusing accounts that were never activated. No new accounts = no new spam

As your account is a repurposed account, it will show your join date as the date that account was previously set up. Which also explains #3.
2. Can you provide more details? What doesn't seem to be working?