That’s likely a far less server intensive way to go about it than any of the above methods, especially if you have your default search frame limited to posts within the past 24 hours.
Yes, except that the time-frame-related search bug means you won’t get reliable results if you do a username search with the same time parameter more than once in a limited span, which I haven’t tested extensively but which feels like about 48 hours.
Judging purely by the copyright notice for vbulletin at the bottom of each page, they’re still using version 3.0.0, whereas the latest version is now up to 3.0.5, which I imagine would fix a bug such as that one.
However, upgrading a bulletin board can be bothersome and sometimes time consuming, so I am not too surprised they have put it off for a while.