To answer my own question about getting the debug window to stop opening when GAIM opens:

i edited /home/user/.gaim/preferences.xml (or something similar, maybe prefs.xml), and where i found debug in the file, i set the value to "0" instead of "1". That fixed this for me. Hope that will help someone else out there, if anyone winds up accidentallly pressing the debug menu item and can't get the window to stop covering up all other windows.