One of the many unique situations created in Hurricane Katrina’s wake, this photo shows an oil rig that had come loose from it’s moorings during the storm and floated into a bridge in Mobile Bay.

Tonight has been one long 1980s nostalgia trip thanks to a $29.95 Atari Flashback2 I found at the local Wal-Mart.

This retro-gaming gadget does a far better job of recreating the early console experience thanks to nice touches such as the accurately recreated Atari 2600 joysticks and the half-size replica of the original black plastic and fake woodgrain design.

Included inside the unit are 40 games, such as Adventure, Pitfall and Combat, as well as 7 unreleased prototype games and 7 new titles created especially for this release.

For around thirty dollars you really can’t beat the nostalgia factor here, particularly from being able to sit back on the couch with those unique one-button Atari joysticks.

The above is all the equipment it took to contain what was Google in 1998.

If you’re looking for another good resource for those interested in a more skeptical view on typically controversial topics like the paranormal, junk science or alternative medicine, visit skepdic.com.

Wikipedia has an entry up for Hurricane Katrina, the category 5 hurricane that’s predicted to have a good chance of hitting the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

As the Wikipedia entry on New Orleans suggests, the world-famous town is especially vulnerable to storms as the entire city is located below sea level in a land area that acts like a large bowl, trapping water inside the city.

The city is protected by large rings of levees that keep the surrounding water at bay, while pumps remove any water brought in by storms. However, predictions of storm surges 26 feet higher than normal tides have resulted in a mandatory evacuation order to be issued.

ZDNET has an article up about AOL being fined $1.25 million dollars and ordered to change their cancellation policy by the state of New York due to the sheer numbers of complaints being filed by customers finding it difficult to cancel their service with the internet service provider.

It’s not difficult to find a horror story from friends and family who’ve used the service and then attempted to cancel, especially as high-speed broadband connections become more common. Many users have complaints about attempting to cancel, only to be lost in the byzantine process they’re thrown into by uncaring AOL customer service agents. Others claim that agents have outright refused to follow through on the cancellation requests, resulting in their accounts continuing to be charged despite repeated calls to the company.

If you’re in need of a few free, online antivirus scanners, here’s a short list:

• Panda ActiveScan
• Trend Micro Housecall
• Symantec Security Check
• McAfee FreeScan

None of these are a replacement for a fully-resident antivirus program as they won’t actually prevent any virus from infecting your machine. However, they will help diagnose a slow-running unit for any possible virus problems.