>I wouldn't force the event. I would prefer that your TimerEvent handler calls a method that does the work. Then, in the page load you can also call the same method, rather than forcing the event.

At load time, what I did was to set the timer to 1 second. With the combination of enabling it, it will go in the event immediately. Then, at the end of the timer, I set the proper interval based on a setting we have in an INI file.