I know there's a file in /etc for gentoo that lets one keep their
cflags settings stored so they don't have to keep on manually
entering them each time they want to compile a new program. I also
know that I did something like this once in Slack, but I just don't
remember how to do it now (had to reformat, System Tools apparently
doesn't like to properly resize ReiserFS partitions....)

Anyway, what I've done so far is creat a file called ~/.bash_profile
for one of my users, and here's what's in that file:

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
export CHOST
export CFLAGS
export CXXFLAGS

since I'm on a P4 computer, I'm trying to optimize this puppy for my
architecture. Now is there anything else I have to do? Keep in mind
that all I've done is create this file, nothing more.

Thanks for the help