Okay, first off: I’ve got a massive MacWorld / Borders / Trip to SF and back report to write up. It’s coming, and I hope it will be worth the wait. Until I can get it done, there are some wonderful links in the comments for my previous entry, from other bloggers who came to MacWorld, Borders, or both.
My short version? It was awesome. It was everything I’d hoped it would be, and more than I could have ever expected. The drive up was great, and the drive home (without Anne, because she went over to Tahoe to spend the weekend with her friend) was lonely, but enjoyable because I listened to Jay Mohr’s book Gasping for Airtime most of the way. It’s a interesting story . . . but you have to hear him read it. It’s the difference between listening to Dark Side of the Moon and reading the sheet music.
Okay. Enough about the trip report that’s coming. Here’s the thing that made me fire up this nifty browser called “Epiphany,” and write these words: I totally, completely, utterly b0rked my Debian machine before I left for MacWorld. I don’t know what I did, exactly, but somehow it completely lost my mouse. modprobe psmouse and modprobe mousedev did nothing, and I couldn’t find anything in a single online forum that would help me make my goddamn mouse work again. I tried dpkg-reconfigure gpm. I tried mouseconfig I tried cursing in lots of different languages, and making Faustian bargains with gods I’m pretty sure I just made up . . . I even taught myself how to recompile a linux kernel (the debian way and the other way) . . . but no dice.
Finally, I gave up, and decided to just start over with a clean partition and a new install. So I did mv /home/wil /mnt/hda1/backedup/, did a diff to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and burned myself a copy of the latest Debian (Sarge) Network installer.
Oh. My. God. Becky. It was so easy.
Okay. Seriously. Back in the old days of 1999, everyone told me how easy it was to set Red Hat up, but how much cooler Debian was if you could just get past the nightmare install . . . well, this was about as easy an install of anything I’ve ever done. It was literally a handful of commands, and then a bunch of waiting while it grabbed a ton of packages and set them up.
I’m now sitting here with a honest-to-goodness Debian system, running kernel 2.6.8!
Check it out:

wil@bender:~$ uname -a
Linux bender 2.6.8-1-386 #1 Thu Nov 11 12:18:43 EST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux

Okay, this is probably not as exciting to anyone else as it is to me . . . but the fact that I got this working, and took all the HAM radio and isdn stuff out of the kernel, and still got it to work . . . it’s a pretty big deal to me.
I’m logged into Gnome right now,( which I usually don’t use — I’m a KDE or Enlightenment kind of guy — but it looks beautiful) and I’ve got apt installing Firefox and Thunderbird in a terminal, and then I’ve got to restore some of the backups, but I’m very proud of myself. Until I totally screw something else up, I feel like I can put on my propeller hat and give it a mighty spin. *snort*
I’ve got an audition tomorrow morning, then I’m working on the audio book of Just A Geek in the afternoon. Check back around Friday for the full SF trip report, and some other cool news.
Oh, man! And if this moment needed to get any better . . . They Might Be Giants just started singing Ana Ng on the radio behind me.

For the past week or so, I’ve been furiously working on my MacWorld presentation, trying to find exactly what I want to say, and just the right way to say it. It’s been a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. This is going to be a very different type of experience than what people are used to at keynotes. I’m not going to talk about the future of anything, or pontificate about how Apple is doing this or not doing that . . . I’m strictly there to entertain the audience. I’m a little nervous about how they’ll respond, so I’ve thrown out everything and started over too many times to count. The entire time, I’ve watched the clock get closer and closer to 9:30 Thursday morning.
When I least expected it (around seven this morning as I packed lunches for Ryan and Nolan), the whole thing sprung into my head fully formed. What a relief! This is my favorite way to write: I can see the entire thing in my mind, like I’m looking down on a huge map. Because I know how the general landscape looks, I can zoom in on some areas and discover really interesting and unexpected details, then pull back to see the whole thing. The entire time, I know where I’m headed, so I’m not afraid to take some side trips as I transcribe what my brain’s come up with when I wasn’t paying attention.
I’m not going to publish all my remarks ahead of time like I usually do, because I think there will be a webcast, and I don’t want to give it all away . . . but it’s been so much fun to develop, I don’t want to wait two whole days to share it with an audience, so I’m going to preview a little bit of it right now:

I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a Macintosh computer. It happened in the summer of 1984 — a long time ago; even longer if you measure according to Moore’s Law.
I was in a bookstore in the San Fernando Valley, looking for a magazine (I think it was called “Byte.”) My friend Brian told me that this magazine was filled with playable arcade games — all I had to do was copy the programs, written in BASIC, to my TI 99/4a.
“Wil, we’re late for dinner. We have to leave now.” It was my father. He held my brother’s hand, and my six year-old sister sat atop his shoulders.
I looked at the rack in front of me: the magazine I had hoped to find wasn’t there, and now I would have to leave empty-handed. I tried to stall him.
“Hey, did you see this, dad?” I took a book off the shelf. The picture on the cover showed that someone had written “hello” in cursive on a computer’s built-in monitor.
He took it from me and looked at it.
“That should keep him occupied for a minute, and I can find this maga—”
“Jeremy,” he said to my kid brother, “take this to mommy and tell her we’re ready to leave.”
Before I could protest, my brother ran the book across the store, my mother paid for it, and we were on our way to The Jolly Roger restaurant to celebrate my being cast in a movie called “The Body.”
In 1984, my family had almost achieved escape velocity from our white trash roots, but we were still poor. It was a big deal to go out to dinner, it was a big deal to buy a book, and I didn’t want to tell my dad that he’d paid for something I didn’t want. So I masked my disappointment and began to read.
“This is made by Apple? Oh, man! Kevin has that Apple ][, and it’s totally lame! It doesn’t play Pac Man like the arcade, and you can’t even hook it up to the television!”
To give this thought some context: in 1984 I thought that Thriller was “awesome” and letting my boxers hang out the bottom of my corduroy OP shorts was “rad,” so perhaps I wasn’t the best judge of what was and wasn’t lame.
It took less than fifteen minutes to drive from the bookstore to the restaurant, and I read that book the entire way. By the time we got out of the car, I had completely forgotten about my silly TI 99/4a. This “Macintosh” computer, I had decided, was the future.
“Dad! This is so cool!” I said as we got out of the car. “You use this thing called a ‘mouse’ to tell the computer what to do!”
My dad nodded politely while he helped my mom get my sister out of her car seat.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah! And it’s got this puzzle game built right into it, and you can use this mouse thing to draw pictures, and it’s got something called ‘MacWrite’ that I could use to write stories, and there’s a clock, and it makes a happy face when you turn it on, and . . .”
I took the book with me into the restaurant, and by the end of the meal I had convinced myself that I had to own one of these machines.
“Mom,” I said, in my most grown-up voice, as we finished dinner, “a lot of other kids at school have computers, and they use them for homework, and to learn math and stuff.”
“What about your Texas Instruments thing?” She said.
“Pish!” I said, “That thing? All that can do is play games! And it doesn’t have a mouse. I hear that all the new computers will have mouses. They’re very important.”
My parents looked at each other.
“We’ll think about it,” they said, in unison.
“Oh? Good. Because, you know, it has a built-in monitor, so I wouldn’t have to hook it up to the television when you guys want to watch TV.”
“Thank you for thinking of us,” my father said, dryly.
I beamed. This was going very well.
“And it’s portable, too! See?” I opened the book, and showed them a picture of the handle that was built into the top. “I could get a carrying case, and take it with me to Aunt Val’s when we go to visit. I could totally entertain myself, and I wouldn’t bother you guys at all.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” my mother said.
“Have you thought about selling cars?” my father asked.
“No. Why?”

After I tell the story of how I got my first Mac, and give a quick synopsis of my history from then until now:

“In 1988, I attended my first MacWorld, and after about an hour here, I realized that, even though I’d upgraded it to four megabytes of RAM, my MacPlus was woefully out of date. I was flush with cash from my weekly gig on Star Trek, so I went nuts: I bought a Macintosh IIx, a 30MB SCSI hard drive, a 2400 baud modem, and eight 1MB SIMMS. When I booted it the first time, I experienced a rush of excitement that I hadn’t felt since I first completed that cool built-in puzzle back in 1984: two hundred and fifty-six fabulous, vibrant, living colors splashed across my screen.”

Then, I plan to segue into Just A Geek. I’ll talk a bit about how I wrote my entire final draft on my iBook, and then I have this thing that I hope Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak will maybe hear someday: “Steve and Woz? Thank you for being such a big part of my life. Thank you for showing people like me that if you dream it, you can do it, even — especially — when nobody else believes in you.”
I’ll read two stories that I hope have a little bit of a universal appeal: The Trade, and Fireworks. If everything goes well, I’ll come in at just under an hour, and everyone will enjoy themselves.
And remember, if you’re in the area and are not coming to MacWorld, you can still come out to Borders in Union Square on Friday night, where I’ll be reading from and signing Just A Geek. I start at 7pm.

A few weeks ago, I did an interview with NPR station WSKG in New York. We talked about the road that lead to WWdN and Just A Geek, and I was able to read a little bit from “The Trade.” I’m quite honored to be part of the program, because it is entirely about authors and their books. It was supercool to do an interview where I was Wil Wheaton the Author, rather than Wil Wheaton Who Used To Be Blah Blah Blah and He Wrote A Book.
Though we had some pretty significant technical issues at the top of the program which rattled me quite a bit, and I was in the early stages of a nasty cold, I’m very happy with the end result.
I meant to link to the interview when I did it, but I spent the first three weeks of December with that cold, and then I got swallowed up by The Holidays™. Follow this link if you’d like to listen. The interview runs just under an hour.

After a three week Winter break, the ACME players (including yours truly) retun to the stage tonight.
That’s right, people! We’ve turned the ACME Love Machine back on, and tonight we’re cranking it up to eleven.
Now let’s be honest, we live in Los Angeles, and when that weird watery stuff falls from the sky, we like to stay home and enjoy WEATHER WATCH!!! on the local news, but I’ve seen tonight’s WEATHER WATCH!!!, and the truth is . . . it kind of sucks. It’s pretty much a rehash of last week’s WEATHER WATCH!!! with a few new shots of that flooding street out in Devore. Your time would be much better spent enjoying the Love Machine. Trust me. I’m totally impartial on this one, folks.
Of course, if you have a Love Machine of your very own, you probably wait months for a night like this so you can stay home and crank it up. If you’re one of those people, enjoy the Cinemax. We all hope to see you at the show next week.
WHAT: ACME Love Machine
WHERE: Acme Comedy Theatre
135 N. La Brea
Hollywood, CA 90036
(323) 525-0202
WHEN: Tonight, 8 pm.

I was two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday, and in Oregon filming Stand By Me, when Live Aid happened in 1985, and I was a little too young (and focused on making the movie) to fully appreciate it. When I was old enough to understand what I’d missed, I never thought I’d get a chance to experience the show.
Never that is, until the good kids at Rhino released Live Aid on DVD, which Anne gave me for Christmas. For the past two days, I’ve turned off Fred and let the DVD run while I work on various writing projects. I’d heard a little bit of it over the Thanksgiving weekend, when XM played it on the 80s channel, so I expected to enjoy it, but I’m a little surprised at just how much it rocks. The performances really hold up, and one of them even made an impression on Ryan and Nolan.
After listening to Paul Young perform one of my all-time favorite songs, (Come Back And Stay), I moved to the couch to watch U2 perform. In order to fully recreate the concert experience, I cranked up the Onkyo to a million, and bounced a beach ball around my living room.
Ryan walked into the room, and sat down on the couch next to me. He and Nolan have grown up with U2 the way I grew up with The Beatles, so he recognized the song right away.
“Is that U2?” He said.
I told him that it was, and while Bono continued to sing, I gave him a brief history of Live Aid.
“. . . so Bob Geldof decided to —”
“Wait. I’m sorry to interrupt, but what’s up with Bono’s boots?” He pointed to the screen, and for the first time I noticed that Bono was wearing leather pants, tucked into knee-high suede boots. They had an impressive heel.
“Uhh . . .” I began.
“And is that . . . oh my god. It is.” The color drained from his face. “He has a mullet.”
Before I could reply, Nolan walked into the room.
“Hey!” He said. “What are you watching?”
“It’s Live Aid,” I said. “They were raising money for —”
“Woah! That is a sweet mullet!” Nolan pointed at the screen and erupted into peals of laughter.
I paused the DVD, and turned to face them.
“Listen, you guys. It was 1985.”
They looked back at me, blankly.
“Oh, nice.” It’s yet another ‘I’ve-just-become-my-parents’ moment, just replace ‘it was the sixties’ with ‘it was the eighties.'”
“The mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll,” I said.
Before either of them could point out how ludicrous this statement was, even if it was true, I tried to explain: “This concert was a really important event! Not only are these all incredible bands at the height of their popularity, but you can see what happened when a bunch of people came together to make a difference in the . . . in the world . . ” I realized that they weren’t listening to me. Ryan’s face was turning red and Nolan was choking back massive giggles.
“What?” I said.
Ryan’s face cracked, and he howled with laughter as he pointed at the TV. I looked up, and saw that I’d paused the movie on a shot of Bono, his head thrown back, eyes clamped shut, microphone held high . . . and mullet in full-effect.
“I’m sorry, Wil.” Ryan said. “What were you saying?”
I laughed in spite of myself. Bono did look pretty ridiculous. “I’ll tell you another time. For now, just try to enjoy the music.”
“Oh, we can do that,” Nolan said, and made a big production of putting his hands over his eyes.
“Hey, let’s see how well your rock and roll heroes hold up in twenty years,” I said.
“As long as they don’t have mullets, I think we’ll be fine,” Ryan said.
I pressed play and we watched — well, I watched and they listened, to the rest of Sunday Bloody Sunday, followed by Bad.
“See?” I said. “That was during Unforgettable Fire, just before Joshua Tree. Those two songs they just played are the reason you have heard U2 since you were too little to know what music was.”
As the final strains of Bad echoed over an aerial shot of Wembley Stadium, they cut to footage of Phil Collins about to board the Concorde.
“Who’s that?” Nolan asked.
“That’s Phil Collins. He just finished performing in London, and now he’s going to fly to Philly to perform there too,” I said. “It was pretty cool.”
“Phil Collins?!” Ryan said, “The wussy Tarzan guy?!”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well . . . yeah.”
“He was cool?”
“Phil Collins was . . . ” I cleared my throat. “He was an international superstar.”
Ryan looked at me, genuinely confused. “Why?”
I took a deep breath and gave the only answer I could.
“It . . . it was 1985.” I said, suddenly not that uncomfortable to take another step toward becoming my parents, and silently grateful that the kids hadn’t been in the room when I was rocking out to Adam Ant.