Wil Wheaton's site is offline. Bummer.

I spent the weekend doing nothing of import, so I have nothing worth saying. Except that if it weren't for the fact that I've built a pretty good life for myself, I'd move out of Florida in a heartbeat. It's too damn hot.

In fact, Florida reminds me of an old joke from Wits, Fittes & Fancies (1595):

A Spanish Jester woonted to say, that in the citie of Sigouia were eight moneths of winter, and foure of hell.

Sigovia has nothing on Florida; here, it is two weeks of winter, and fifty of hell.

I have the worst luck with computer parts. It's been years since I've been able to buy one or more computer parts and not have to return at least one of them.

Because my motherboard is acting up again, I decided to buy a new one. While I was at the store, I bought a 512 MB stick of memory (only $68 -- I remember when a 1 MB stick cost over $200), a 1.4 GHz CPU, a chipset fan, and two wheel mice (one for me and one for Karen).

They gave me wheelless mice. The chipset fan doesn't fit onto the motherboard, because there's a pair of capacitors too close to the chips. Even though the motherboard specs say that it takes 512 MB sticks, the manual says it can only handle 256 MB (or smaller) sticks. And to add insult to injury, the motherboard itself is shot. Plugged everything in, turned on the power switch, and... nothing. Plugged the power supply into the old motherboard: it works. Plugged it into the new motherboard: nothing. Triple-checked every single jumper; everything's set up correctly. Looks like it's back to the store again, to return everything except the smegging CPU. Come to think of it, I'd better bring it with me and have them test it. With my luck, it'll be bad too.

File this under S for Stupid: The motherboard's manual is in PDF format on a CD-ROM that came with the motherboard. Good thing I had a second computer available so I could read the "troubleshooting" section in the manual, eh?

I've been spoiled by Opera. Opera uses something called "mouse gestures", in which you hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse in a particular pattern in order to perform certain functions. For example, to go back to the previously-viewed page, hold down the RMB and move the mouse left. To close the window, make an "L" shape. To open a link in a new window, right-click on the link and drag the mouse down. And so on.

It's extremely convenient. But I keep trying to use the mouse gestures in other applications.

Why did one plane crash in Pennsylvania? I've heard some people espousing the theory that it was shot down by the military, but the interviews of witnesses to the crash didn't contain anything that would lend credence to that theory -- no mention of explosions before the nosedive, no mention of military planes chasing it...

Another theory I've heard is that the hijackers weren't able to control the plane. That's just ridiculous; given the amount of planning that went into this, the precision with which it was carried out, and the skill shown by the pilot in the Washington plane, it stands to reason that all the planes had competent pilots who would have been able to control the planes.

So why did it crash? Did the passengers overwhelm the hijackers? Did one of the flight crew manage to stay alive and kill the terrorist who was flying? Morbid curiosity, I suppose, but knowing would make me feel better. I'll be really pissed if some brainless network executive decides to turn this into a tacky made-for-TV movie.

It still doesn't quite seem real. But there are cops in flak jackets sitting in unmarked cars parked in downtown Tampa. (I breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when Dubya left MacDill AFB.)

And speaking of Tampa, the latest news is that at least two of the men involved in the attack took their flight training about sixty miles south of here.

The thing I find the most sickening is the footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets. Only a nation of sociopaths could find cause for jubilation in the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

The frightening thing is, it could have been much worse. It still could be.

A story on the AP Newswire reminded me of something I had completely forgotten: that the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen involved a government plot to crash a commercial airliner into the World Trade Center and blame it on international terrorists -- a plot which was averted at the very last second (in a disappointingly unrealistic fashion) by Our Intrepid Heroes.

Perhaps that's why it still doesn't seem real: because it's too close to something I knew was fake.

The media played me for a fool, and I bit. I got pissed off by the images of "the Palestinians" celebrating in the streets, just as I was supposed to. Did I notice that it was mostly teenagers? Nope. I just saw people cheering at the senseless deaths of Americans. And I did what I was supposed to do. I hated them.

And now I see other avenues of media manipulation. All the pictures of Osama bin Laden that I can recall seeing in the past two days have shown him holding a gun, or wearing a camouflage jacket. The message: This is the bad guy. Hate him. He killed Americans. Never mind that the government still hasn't conclusively identified him as the ultimate source of the attack.

Or the sanitized coverage of the mainstream media. Last night, my band was supposed to rehearse, but none of us felt much like making music. So, of course, we talked about the attack. I expressed my surprise that the increasingly sensationalist media hadn't been showing clips of the jumpers, but ony mentioning them. The wife of our bass player replied that she had been watching the Spanish-language channels, which didn't restrict the video to the plane crashes, the fires and the collapses: they showed the victims, they showed the jumpers, they showed the body parts. They displayed the horrible consequences of warlike acts in all their grisly splendor.

When you see something like that, retribution is no longer just an abstraction, an expression of righteous indignation; you can't avoid knowing that, no matter how justified it is, any retaliation will have the same horrible, physically repulsive results. You might still believe it's the best course, but now you do so with the full knowledge of the consequences of your actions.

Why did CNN show endless repeats of "the Palestinians" celebrating, but avoid showing us the actual consequences of an act of war? Because they think Americans' sensibilities are too fragile? Or to manipulate us?

So now, in addition to everything else that's happened this week, my county is under, variously: a tropical storm warning, a hurricane watch, a flood watch and a tornado watch. Government is shut down, schools are closed, bridges are closed. Better leave early for work. For my office is still open.

I had trouble falling asleep last night, something that almost never happens to me. Something was missing, and it took me a while to figure out what it was. Sound. I've become so used to the omnipresent background noise that comes from living near a huge airport that it no longer registers on my consciousness; now that the airlines are shut down, what registers is its absence. When the rain started, I slept.

Whoops, lights just flickered. Time to unplug.

That's the first sentence in the story "The Long Rain", in The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. And the phrase keeps occurring to me as I look out the window, with sheets of rain alternating with gusts of wind. I doubt I'm in danger of going insane from the rain, but I think I'll re-read that story when I get home. And hopefully Don't You (Forget about Me) will have stopped repeating in my head by then, specifically the line about the rain which keeps coming down down down. Well, I can always listen to "Spanish Flea", which is like a musical virus that deletes all other music stuck in one's head, and installs itself instead.

Speaking of which, I learned a new term today: Foistware. I had to go into RegEdit to get rid of my previous mouse driver, which kept installing itself onto the Taskbar even though I purportedly uninstalled it. While I was in RegEdit, I found something called "new.net" that installs itself whenever my system starts up. I didn't recall having installed anything by that name, so a quick Googling informed me that I'd been infected with some foistware that came bundled with something else (I'm really getting sick of this; the Logitech mouse driver I just installed put a shortcut to eBay on my desktop).

I'm a gullible idiot, and I admit it. Alan Thicke's blog is not in fact written by Alan Thicke. Which is a pity, because my opinion of Alan Thicke went up several notches from reading it (not that I had a low opinion of the guy before, but here I was, thinking Alan Thicke was this intelligent, articulate, really funny guy [which, for all I know, the real Alan Thicke is], but it turned out not to be him after all). From now on, the first thing I read on a Web page is going to be the disclaimer.

As if Falwell and Robertson using the World Trade Center tragedy to justify their intolerance and hatemongering wasn't enough, the Scientologists have been boasting amongst themselves about their efforts to disrupt the grief-counseling activities of legitimate mental health professionals (and here I thought tricking Fox News into displaying the Dianetics number as a "National Mental Health Assistance" line was an egregious abuse of other people's suffering).

Quoting sections from a letter received by an ex-member who's still on their email lists:

To: Scientologists
From: CO I HELP Canada

Dear All,

For the last two days I have been in New York Org running, with several other Sea Org members, the deployment of Volunteer Ministers into the disaster zone.

[...]

Additionally we are trying to move in and knock the psychs out of counseling to the grieving families and that could take another 100 plus people right now. Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. They have a hard time completing cycles of action and are pretty easy to disperse. But today they are out in full force and circling like vultures over these people and all of our resources are tied up in the support efforts in the disaster zone at present.

[...] No one can do anything for them or the rest but Scientologists. The other religions here with their ministers have shown their true colors and are working hand in hand with the psychs to give these people as much false data and restimulation as they can. They HAVE NO TECH and they're not even trying to hide it anymore. They've crossed over and abandoned anything spiritual and to hell with them.

So I'm sending this out to you. It is a direct request for your presence here now. We are uptone. We are making it go right. We need help now. And what this place needs now more than anything else in the whole wide world is more Scientologists here right now.

Thank you.

Lt. Simon Hare CO I HELP Canada (in NY)

Scientologists use a lot of nonstandard jargon, especially when talking amongst themselves. The two most important ones in the letter above are: the "Sea Org", which is the inner corps of hard-core Scientologists -- the ones who've signed a billion-year contract to serve Scientology -- and "psychs", which is their term for legitimate mental-health professionals (whether psychiatrists, psychologists or just counselors), whom Scientologists hate. For more information, visit Operation Clambake.

I despise the cult of Scientology, but trying to prevent grieving families from getting grief counseling is low even for them.

Despite the utter crappiness of this past week, I've found one shining beacon of joy to latch onto.

Code Red (the beverage, not the Internet worm) is now available in two-liters and cans. I picked up a two-liter this morning, and I've already drunk about 1.5 liters. I know it'll probably kill me, but there are much worse ways to go.

(The only thing that would make me happier would be Afri-Cola in two-liters and cans. Cans that don't cost $1.50 each, which is what an 11-oz bottle of it costs at the only place in Tampa that has it...)

Okay, a bunch of people have hit this page through searches on how to remove the W32/Nimda worm.

So here's the scoop: McAfee has released a free Nimda cleaner. I haven't had to use it, because my systems are not infected. So if someone uses it, please email me and let me know if it does in fact do the job, so I can update this entry with that information.

Update: I'm told there's an updated version of the free Nimda cleaner, which I'm assured does in fact work.

Still digesting the premiere of Enterprise. It has so much potential; if only the producers would (a) hire a science advisor, to prevent blunders like making the Klingon homeworld 0.8 light-years from Earth, (b) hire a Trek geek who knows every series inside and out, to stamp out continuity errors (such as the plethora of easily-avoidable ones of which the premiere was full), and (c) get rid of that awful, awful theme song.

Oh, and actors portraying Vulcans should be told that "emotionless" is not equal to "expressionless" and "monotone". I was terribly disappointed by Gary Graham's performance as the Vulcan ambassador, because I know he can do so much better.