changing settings: scrollbars, tap click, splash, login noise, ...

[arne anka]

hi,
i'd like to change the above things to more sensible defaults (for me).
- the scrollbars are far to big -- where can one change width (for  
up/down) and height (left/right)?
- lowering the volume of the tap clicks -- asl already mentioned, with  
headphones they're piercing the eardrum and when in public it annoys other  
people
- disabling the splashscreen
- disabling the noise the fr makes when starting X
- setting default fontsize for the terminal -- it always starts up 2x too  
big and i need to scale it down

on a related note:
- where do i find syslog/kern.log? -- booting shows some crc errors and  
others too and i'd like to have a look at the logs, not sure if dmesg  
shows everything

thanks