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Does anyone other than me find it annoying to go to a Facebook page, especially after clicking an ad in the sidebar that you may be interested in reading, and finding that you can't actually view anything on the page until you click "like"? What's the point in that? How am I supposed to know whether I "like" the page before you let me look at the content? STUPID! I think Facebook should prevent that type of code from being added to pages. (In particular, I clicked on the Edmunds "100 worst cars of all time" ad/link - and couldn't see anything on the Edmunds Facebook page until I clicked "like" on the page; afterward, I couldn't even find the article - or a link to it - on that page! I did eventually search "100 worst cars" and found the article - on Edmunds' site - but oh, how silly, to have to go through liking (and then unliking) the page on Facebook, especially when the article wasn't even there... why didn't they just link the ad to their article on the Edmunds site to begin with?)

Now, like this post, or you can't read it! Wait...

Common Failure

A local dealer has a 2004 Mazda RX-8 for sale. I was just doing some searching on the RX-8, and apparently, according to Edmunds reliability ratings, "a periodic problem on this vehicle is failure of the Engine. This failure may prevent the vehicle from starting." Really? Failure of the engine "may" prevent the engine from starting? And "cost to repair the engine" is listed as $6,282 for parts and another $722 for labor (at an unrealistic labor cost of $65/hour - when was the last time you had a mechanic charge you just $65/hour for labor?). So, $7,500 for the car, and reserve another $7k to replace the engine at some point in the future. Yeah, I think I may pass on this one, thanks anyway (the car is way out of warranty, so any additional mechanical expense would be my burden).

Another failure: why can I stream HD movies from Netflix on my PS3, yet YouTube can't seem to reliably stream low-def videos? I'm not quite sure I follow that.

So, anyway, merry Christmas!