A rant on web ads, or what sent Robin over the edge to installing an ad blocker

(What's the point of having a blog if you can't use it to rant about what's annoying you?)

OK, I, of all people, understand why websites have ads.  After all, I worked in search ads for Google for almost 4 years.  I even see ads as a good thing, not just for the web site owner, who is making a living from them, but also for the site visitor, who may get information from an ad that meets some need they have. So I have been really reluctant to install an ad blocker, as I think a web without ads will certainly be more expensive and might be less enjoyable than one with ads.

That's all well and good, till the ads (those image and video based ads that seem to be everywhere these days) make my browser so slow that it locks up.  I definitely experienced slowdowns back in the US, but there is something about our internet setup here that has me rebooting my computer a couple of times a day, as it is completely locked up.  So I did what I never expected to do -- installed an ad blocker.  It was easier than I thought (at least with Chrome), and using my computer has been a joy today, rather than the device I was working hard not to throw across the room.

What is it with these people?  Do they not use their own site?  Or only do it with the fastest internet speed possible?  and never use it when they have 3 other resource hogging sites in other tabs?  Or do they not care?  And while we are at it, why is it, on the german-english translation sites I use, that 90% of the ads are for some seminar put on by either McKinsey or BCG?  Do I look like someone who is interested in executive training?  (Obviously these advertisers are not reading my blog.) Maybe these sites assume that the majority of their users are executives (more likely executive wannabes) who are being posted to Germany or Austria?  Highly resource intensive ads for something I'm singularly uninterested in -- what a great way of encouraging me to come back to your website.

While I am at it, here are some titles for rants I have all prepared, but I won't bore you with:

• guess how much money I am going to give to the Democratic Party if they continue to call me every single night in the middle of the night?  (Yes, I have my phone ringer off)
• if the Guesthouse insists on having a clothes dryer that leaves the clothes damper than "ironing damp", could they at least provide enough places to hang up the wet stuff?
• why is there a hearing-aid store every .25 miles, but it's over a mile to the nearest laundromat?
• why can't the meat in the US be either as high quality as it is here or as cheap? (I know better than to ask for both)