Hey, so for the amount of time I've been skrittering I should really know this, but I have a question...

When I'm reviewing words but the review number is at 0, am I reviewing words early? If not, where are those words coming from? My adding is set to manual, so this is assuming I'm not adding any words and I just keep getting old words.

Yes once you get to zero you are reviewing old words ahead of time. I stop when I get to zero and go do something else, like learn new characters :)

lucky you that you see a zero!!!

my counter always gets up when zero is close ...

I never manage to reach zero. One day I will try to research this but a tipical situation is as follows: I start with the counter at say 140 and after about 30 minutes, reviewing, say 150 words and characters of which I have maybe 70% right, the counter will still be around 80 or 90. As for getting it to zero...even if I use the 'Save me' feature, pushing everything back 10 days, I will get a counter between 20 and 30. I have tried to get it to zero a few times. It just seems to be impossible. Even after reviewing 100 items it is still stuck around 10-15 items, sometimes adding items at a higher pace then I can review them.

I only get to zero because I am using "Manual adding"

Yeah, I would suggest that Marchey you are on the automatic add setting.

ohhhhhh you are so lucky again!. when i open my skritter window i see the impressive figure of 845!
there were times when i had 1300 to review...

with these kind of figures i have to do at least two and more hours a day....
since my brain is slow.

I solved this problem by lowering my target retention rate. I think I have also raised my retention rate recently by
1. Skrittering every day for a total of one hour of Skritter time.
2. Making a lot of new mnemonics for myself, as a result of the "Hacking Chinese" challenge. (challenge to be more active on words that I fail, instead of just waiting until they come around again on Skritter.)

Even when u get to 0, skritter will start asking you the ones you fail the most and some easy long term memory reinforcement questions, so keep using it when u reach 0