found a gif i want to use as my sig but it is way too large. any software or any pointers to get the size of this thing down?

you need a gif maker to extract all the pictures in the gif into a folder
then you can resize all the pictures to the size you need

then you take take all the new jpgs, and make new gif with the gif maker

graphic manipulator - use irfanview.com

gif maker - dont know of a good free one - you have to search it out