Captcha This, Bubba!

Too bad I can't make an obscene gesture here, but you get the idea.

I understand the purpose of the Captcha stuff. I just think it's a huge pain in the ass.

The other day I was posting a comment on one of my friends' MySpace. Now, I'm used to Captcha strings that are maybe five letters/digits long. This one pops up, and it's eight or nine letters/digits, AND they're so distorted that I couldn't make out all of them. I'm serious -- huge swoops and squiggles, letters overlapping, odd swipes and swirls added. I honestly couldn't make them out, but I tried my best.

Nope, got it wrong. Another Captcha string pops up, even worse than the first. Failed it, too.

The third one was a little better. There were only a two I couldn't figure out.

The fourth one I only missed one.

Come on! It's not like I'm passing on state secrets or banking codes or anything like that. It's a simple comment to my friend. It would have been, like, ten times easier to just send her an email.

Finally, after all these long, complicated, modern-art type strings, I've lost patience, and apparently, Captcha has decided that I'm too dumb to be up to anything nefarious. The next string I get is: wpdz. No swoops. No swirls. No overlapping. Just four, simple, straightforward letters. A blind person could've read them.

Jeez, save me from technology.

Particularly technology that clearly thinks it's smarter than me.

Especially when it is. Rachel10:59 AM