Poppin' Mad
For the past few months, my Google toolbar has been flawless. It's handy for searching. Doesn't interfere with anything. And best of all, it blocks the pop-up ad onslaught overkill that occurs almost every time I click on a webpage.

It never missed a pop-up. It was great! A pop-free world.

But this week, for some reason, it's only catching some of the pop-ups. I can tell it's still blocking because the counter number keeping track of the number of ads blocked keeps going up. It's at 2764 right now. Can you believe that many pop-up ads have been blocked in probably two months' time??

And yet, for the past few days every time I click on a webpage, I get a pop-up ad. I HATE pop-up ads. Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate them.

I'm not sure why the sudden lack of being able to catch all the pop-ups. I'm pretty sure I haven't downloaded anything new lately. But an email to Google about the situation resulted in a response that it was probably my fault for downloading something that enabled third-party pop-ups, and this is something the Google toolbar can't do anything about.

Thanks, Google.

So now I'm suffering through pop-ups again. Not only that, I'm getting pop-behinds. Have you seen these? They lurk behind your webpage and other open windows on the computer, then when you close everything down there it is. A pop-up that was behind everything all along.

To all 'pop' people (behind or up or otherwise): I will never click on your ads (if I can help it before it gets in my way and I accidentally click on it, which makes me even madder), or use your products for the sole reason that I am so annoyed by the popping in the middle of whatever I'm trying to do on a website. It makes me not want anything to do with you, you evil pop-freaks.

I wish that as many times as I have to close a pop-up in any given day, a pop-up with my disapproving face (on a neon flashing background, of course) would pop-up wherever these people are.

Take that! Ha!

C.T.