Having read the advice regarding auto_shrink, I checked our database and found that several did indeed have that option on.

Rather than simply turning it off (we have gobs of space available, but I don't know that I want to let things grow without bounds), I decided to see if SQL Server 2000 provided a simple way to do this. Surprise, surprise, you can set a time to shrink in your maintenance plan. We'll be doing weekly shrinks (once the database grows to twice its current size, that is).