is there a way to get the logs to store smilies and is there a way to auto-lock the log files?

Hello,

Well, if I understand correctly, you wish to "lock" your logs so that others can't view them?  Well, you can't really do that but you can encrypt your logs with a password so that you can't access them without the right password.  It is really very smart!  As for emoticons, as far as I know you will just see the actual characters for the emoticons in the log, and it could not be done differently because the logs are in plaintext.

With lopardo's Log Viewer, available for download at http://360software.dakotabcn.net/logviewer/index.html, you can view your Plus! log files with a bit more lay-out such as colours and also emoticons if I'm not mistaken. It's labeled 'beta' (as in not finished release), but it's very stable. You might want to check it out