We've made the change and the Server is gettin' killed: HELP

[TheFiringLine.com]

I'm really out of my depth, though I've played with the settings per Mr. Eng's guidelines.
Any help would be appreciated.
Rich


Environment:
Dedicated Server running nothing but my vB site at http://www.thefiringline.com/forums
Red Hat Linux
256M Memory

1:01pm up 11:44, 2 users, load average: 1.86, 6.34, 6.26
126 processes: 120 sleeping, 5 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 5.2% user, 46.6% system, 36.2% nice, 11.7% idle
Mem: 256524K av, 236528K used, 19996K free, 54196K shrd, 5488K buff
Swap: 530104K av, 13080K used, 517024K free 151868K cached

Stats:
| Aborted_clients | 6 |
| Aborted_connects | 0 |
| Created_tmp_tables | 3855 |
| Delayed_insert_threads | 0 |
| Delayed_writes | 0 |
| Delayed_errors | 0 |
| Flush_commands | 1 |
| Handler_delete | 508 |
| Handler_read_first | 1062 |
| Handler_read_key | 3822009 |
| Handler_read_next | 44332615 |
| Handler_read_rnd | 23678226 |
| Handler_update | 7506 |
| Handler_write | 85252 |
| Key_blocks_used | 1943 |
| Key_read_requests | 14060316 |
| Key_reads | 1943 |
| Key_write_requests | 2593 |
| Key_writes | 2402 |
| Max_used_connections | 98 |
| Not_flushed_key_blocks | 0 |
| Not_flushed_delayed_rows | 0 |
| Open_tables | 275 |
| Open_files | 86 |
| Open_streams | 0 |
| Opened_tables | 279 |
| Questions | 109989 |
| Running_threads | 41 |
| Slow_queries | 1039 |
| Uptime | 5047 |


| back_log | 5 |
| connect_timeout | 5 |
| delayed_insert_limit | 100 |
| delayed_insert_timeout | 300 |
| delayed_queue_size | 1000 |
| join_buffer | 2093056 |
| flush_time | 0 |
| key_buffer | 25161728 |
| language | /usr/local/mysql/share/mysql/english/ |
| log | OFF |
| log_update | OFF |
| long_query_time | 10 |
| low_priority_updates | OFF |
| max_allowed_packet | 1047552 |
| max_connections | 150 |
| max_connect_errors | 10 |
| max_delayed_insert_threads | 20 |
| max_join_size | 4294967295 |
| max_sort_length | 1024 |
| max_write_lock_count | 4294967295 |
| net_buffer_length | 16384 |
| port | 3306 |
| protocol_version | 10 |
| record_buffer | 4190208 |
| skip_locking | ON |
| skip_networking | OFF |
| socket | /tmp/mysql.sock |
| sort_buffer | 4194296 |
| table_cache | 300 |
| thread_stack | 65536 |
| tmp_table_size | 1048576 |
| tmpdir | /tmp/ |
| version | 3.22.32 |
| wait_timeout | 28800