Another option is to use a repeating background image with the faux columns method. It will be slightly trickier in that you have a fluid page, so it might also we worth setting max and min widths.
You can't use 100% height on your main wrapper because that will limit it to 100% and effectively never grow. The CSS faq (see my sig) explains how to use the 100% height and you need min-height:100% instead.
It seems you are also using a sticky footer but your version is broken in IE7 and under so you may want to look at the css faq again as there is a better (if more complicated) sticky footer method that works almost everywhere.
I would also suggest that you make our left column a fixed pixel width because the elements inside it are too big almost immediately for the content (or at least set a min-width in pixels).
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