Well, if the contents of our inbox are any indication, it looks like the Mydoom worm has finally tapered off to a low-level annoyance, as opposed to the 'net-crushing nightmare it was early last week. At the height of its activity, we once received 127 worm-sent messages in the space of an hour, all to a single account; now the same account gets maybe three or four a day. And thank heaven for the reduction, because when all that worm mail was flooding in, it was a lot harder to spot those vital LOWEST EVER MORTGAGE RATE notifications and time-limited special offers on herbal Viagra. We're worried sick that we missed some important information on how to de-radiate our cell phone for just pennies a day.

Indeed, for all we know there may be some SKANKY TEENAGE SLUTS out there who are now all miffed at us because we didn't return their messages; meanwhile, our cell phones continue to slowly kill us just because we missed out on a fabulous de-radiating offer that got swept from our inboxes in the mad dash to shovel out all that Mydoom mail. Between miffed sluts and an eventual horrible cell phone-related death, we're understandably burning for vengeance. That's why we're intrigued by a TechWeb article that originally surfaced last week, as pointed out by faithful viewer JC. It seems that one of the Mydoom variants actually contains a message buried in its code from the author: "I'm just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry." Oh, right-- like "sorry" is going to make our cell phones safe and patch things up with the girls.

But whereas the virus experts are all agog at the apology part, thinking that it means the worms were works for hire, here's the interesting part to us: both variants of the Mydoom worm were apparently signed by the author, who identified himself as "andy." Sadly, andy didn't include a last name, a current mailing address, or a phone number where he might be reached during the day, so this discovery is somewhat less helpful in our plans for brutal retaliation than we'd like. (Too bad he didn't create the worm with Microsoft Visual Virus XP, or else all of that extra personal info would have probably been embedded in the worm without him knowing, along with andy's credit card numbers and a fragment of a fan letter to teen-heartthrob pop sensation Aaron Carter.)

However, JC made an interesting connection. On the very same day that TechWeb published its article about the author of Mydoom, someone claimed responsibility for another 'net-based and virally-spreading source of emotional pain and frustration: the green-neoned, Athloned-up, XPed-out, fate-worse-than-death G5-turned-crappy-PC semi-hoax that had Mac users retching nonstop for days. When the blasphemer revealed (or at least claimed) that he was only kidding about having savaged a brand new dual-processor Power Mac G5, and had actually only installed PC guts in an empty Power Mac enclosure, he revealed the same psychopathic tendencies, sense of "humor," and utter disregard for the welfare of others that figure so prominently in the standard FBI profile of the virus-writer. And hey, guess what? The G5-defiler identifies himself as "Andy."

Coincidence? Perhaps, but we strongly suggest that the authorities follow up on the lead. Although even if "andy" and "Andy" are one and the same, the half-million-dollar joint reward from SCO and Microsoft (minus JC's cut, of course) just won't make up for the physical and emotional trauma we've suffered from un-de-radiated cell phones and the knowledge that somewhere out there, because of us, SKANKY TEENAGE SLUTS are shedding bitter tears of loneliness and betrayal...