Another pet peeve of mine

I like surfing the web, and have quite a few websites - and not just blogs - bookmarked. At times, I'll even take a chance, and click on an ad link (hint, hint), just to see where it takes me. But, a lot of the time when I do that, I'm disappointed.

Why? Because the webmaster decided to get 'cute', and installed several different ads on his site. Now, don't get me wrong - ads serve a useful purpose when people do click on them (hint, hint) - but what really gets me, and is a pet peeve of mine, is when you go to a web site, and their page is filled to overflowing with ads.

And not just simple ads, mind you, but flashing, blinking ads, or ads that float across your screen and then park themselves right there, in the middle of what you are trying to look at, whether it's a picture or text, and even though they have that 'X' up in the upper right hand corner, or 'close' somewhere on it, when you click it, it doesn't go away!

Ads do have a purpose, as I briefly mentioned above, in that when people click on them (hint, hint) that means the webmaster is getting a tiny bit of ka-ching added to his account. And hey, everybody likes a little extra cash coming in, right? (Tell me you don't. Go ahead, I'm waiting ...)

What ads aren't for, though, is to distract your visitor from the main thrust of your website. Let me make this perfectly clear to anyone reading this who has a website and is contemplating putting ads on it. Blinking, flashing, floating, or in any other way distracting ads, drive people away from your website, not induce them to return (unless they like all that visual stimulation, of course) to your site.

Oh, yeah ... almost forgot. Pop-up ads suck, too! Because of the prevalence of these blights of the web, I've had to install pop-up blocking software on my computer. Memo to all the scum sucking slime balls that either create, or use, pop-up ads - my computer is just that. Mine! Not yours - you can do whatever you want with your computer, as long as it doesn't harm others, but I don't recall ever having had a case of the stupids and giving you permission to do what you want on my computer! So quit, already. I'm sick of it.

Whew ... glad to get that off my chest. And now, back to your regular program.