Those Wicked CAPTCHAS

I have come to the conclusion that the person who is in control of the world of captchas is the very same sadistic character who personally wrapped every CD that I have ever purchased. That used to drive me nuts - buying a new CD,  bringing it back to the car trembling with anticipation, only to end up gnawing at it with my teeth like a starving rat in a futile effort to open the darn thing. I'm not positive, but I would bet that quite a few injuries have occured because of this over the years. Perhaps this is why some of my teeth are a little wobbly when I'm munching peanut brittle.

Now I'm finding a cyber-equivalent to this phenomena, namely the increasing difficulty of CAPTCHAS. You all know what CAPTCHAS are (although I'd bet a few of you didn't know that they actually had a name - up until now you've either been calling them "those letter thingys" or avoided talking about them altogether), and have had to use them with increasing regularity as of late.

A CAPTCHA is a "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." I'll admit that the name stretches the definition of an acroynm, but it is kind of quaint. They are the little set of letter and numbers at the end of computer form submissions that are either wavy, multicoloured, grainy, struckthrough, or otherwise nearly impossible to read. As of late they seem to be getting more and more difficult to figure out. I have given up on trying to submit certain things after four of five failed attempts. It's frustrating to load an entire page full of information only to fail the CAPTCHA test time and time again. The darn things should be called "GOTCHA's". I never struggled with them before, but they are starting to wear me down with increasing regularity. Please Yahoo, I just want to play chess, why are you so difficult?

One of the most appealing things about the Active Rain blogging system is that I can make out the letters that I have to type into the little box. They appear to be letters, letters that resemble the letters I learned to discern from one-another in school all those years ago. I like that. My witticisms do not get washed away into the netherworld because I'm a troglodyte who can't seem to master Pablo Picasso's alphabet.

Please, to ensure that you are not a computer, kindly enter the letters as they are shown in the image.