Okay, I've been silent about this because I'm computerly challenged, but this has gotten ridiculous. What's the point of a chatroom where all you can do is look at the welcome message? This was the fourth time I've been there, in four different months, and the detail changes, but the experience remains the same.

It asks me what applet I want and I have no idea, so I take the default 'normal'.
Next it switches me to a different security screen than Gary shows, with four options. I choose 'yes'.
Then I get a coffee cup, which usually sticks around quite awhile, but today came and went quickly.
Then several screens of data flash past, finally settling on a greeting message in black, brown and green print, including a note that 'Channel mode is +ntr', whatever that means.
And that's it. If I type, nothing appears on the screen. There are no messages from other people. When I tried clicking on what looked like the message bar (impossible to tell, since no messages appeared when I type), my machine went into a loop that 'force quit' couldn't get me out of, so I had to 'option-command-escape' to kill my browser, then restart the browser to get me back here to bitch about it.

Previous attempts have been similar, but one time I was able to type a message, but only one letter would appear in the message field at a time (then disappear as the next was typed). Another time the screen assured me that two other people were in the room, told me what the 'topic of the day' was (huh? topic of the day?), but I couldn't type in and no messages ever appeared from the other two people.

I've come to call it "The White Room" -- the place where nothing ever changes. I can't really say that I'm surprised that's it's underutilized. Things that don't work, don't get used.