Where should I re-start?

I'll try to be brief:

I want to be able to code proficiently. My short term goal is to be able to work on a somewhat meaningful project. A simple internet chat client, perhaps, would be an example of what I'd like to be able to work on in the near future.

I wouldn't be starting from scratch. In fact, give me another year or two and I will have been programming for half of my life. The problem is that due to distractions and whatnot, I've never taken the time to learn a particularly useful language. QBASIC, Visual Basic, whatever language it was that they used for those Lego Mindstorms robots, at various points in my life I've known each those languages inside and out. So I'm familiar with the basics--loops, arrays, etc.

I'm not looking for hand holding, just finger pointing. I want to know

1) What language I should pursue.

2) Where I can get information and tutorials on it.

3) What software, such as compilers, I'll need to use the language effectively.

I know each of these questions probably has a debate attached to it, but I trust that any answer considered worthy of being included in the debate would suffice.

A couple of stipulations for the answers: any language I learn would need to work cross-platform. I don't know if that's even an issue, but I have friends on several operating systems and would like to (someday) create applications that we would be able to use together. Second, free is very good. Not to be melodramatic, but I have a hard time feeding myself. I can really only spend money on essentials right now. If absolutely necessary, I can probably get one of my friends to give me a copy of an outdated release, but I'd rather not.

Thank you so much for taking a look at my request, and for any help you can give me.

You should start with VB.NET. The IDE is excellent, the language style will be somewhat familiar to you and you can get coding useful things pretty much straight away. Get the free Express Edition from Microsoft's website and work through the tutorials. If you want to be a bit adventurous and branch out a more C-style syntax, try C#.

Or even better, try both. VB.NET first and then C#. You'll get an appreciation of different syntax styles while getting familiar with the .NET framework.

Later, you may want to try other more difficult languages like Python, Haskell, Sepples and so on. But don't start with these.

And forget about cross-platform stuff until you've learned the basics on one platform.