And the heavens opened and choirs of angels were singing hallelujahs and pumping their fists in the air

For several months now, we have had a problem with our computer. We would try to access a webpage and, for a nanosecond, the page would materialize on the screen. But then a search page would pop up listing websites selling things. And the things this page was offering was totally unrelated to what we were originally trying to locate. Certain pages on some websites were totally inaccessible because of this pop-up website.

This morning, I was on amazon dot com wishing for things, and I couldn't even do a simple search within amazon because of this ask dot com thingie that kept me from my destination page. I wanted to claw my computer's eyes out.

So I've spent the morning troubleshooting. And this is after several weeks of googling for remedies. A few weeks ago, following one such method recommended by a search query, I tried messing around with the control panel and accessibility features, but succeeded only in blocking necessary websites (smartmusic dot com and another school-related website) from being accessed without a password. (Sorry about that, kids. I have rectified the matter. No more--hopefully--having to type in a totally girly password to access school stuff. I promise brownies later to make up for you having to type "lotsofcutekittiesandprettyprincessbarbies" [not the real password, just an incredible simulation])

Finally, this morning, after choking back buckets of hatred and primitive urges to kill furry creatures and mangling hard drives, I think I found the problem. I downloaded an adblocker to Firefox (my browser) and I was able to search for Halloween scrapbook papers (yes Halloween is forever on my mind) on amazon without ask dot com jumping in front of everything and saying "HEY LOOK AT ME!!! AREN'T I SPECIAL??" And now, all the websites I visit load MUCH FASTER because the adblocker blocks all those ads on the sidebar that get loaded first!

So, during this Thanksgiving time of year, I am grateful to the person who came up with adblocker and to the search engine that led me to the adblocker itself.