weather.com is ad-noying to the max

Today I was reminded why I never use weather.com. First - it never simply accepts what I want. Example I type in: Detroit, MI. It comes back and gives me two choices: Detroit Michigan and Detroit Wayne County Airport. Now I ask you - if I type Detroit, MI don't you think I want Detroit, Michigan? Also - how different could weather possibly be between the airport and downtown. So I choose Detroit and am presented with a very nice banner at the top of the screen allowing me to search for more stuff, and an advertisement off to the right for water, or something. It tells me what the temperature is right now - which is actually useful data. I need to scroll down to find out what the next 36 hours may bring, I won't even go into the scrolling feature of web sites, far too much information is buried down below instant visibility for my taste, but that is an entire other rant. I count a total of 7 ads on this page alone, not counting the software push to have weather on my desktop. I am therefore an avid user of wunderground.com - although they too are slipping into ad nonsense.

Fun day in Shanghai

What started as a near wash out with the first dozen or so laps run behind the safety car turned into a decent race. Everyone stayed on full wets the entire race, but there was enough off/on action and Lewis provided adventure by, as the commentators noted, "needing to pass each person two or three times" to make it stick as he would frequently misjudge traction and do a pirouette and cycle back a few spots. Vettel came up aces on the pole, and rode it through to victory. The kid seems to have the right metal - now he just needs to keep it up. Driver standings look a bit like someone gave them the old switcheroo - Timo Glock in 4th!?!?!? Team standings are even more bizzaro - Ferrari tied with mighty Force India-Mercedes after three races. Red Bull found the juice in the wet. Next week will likely be very dry - but could be just as dry as the sands blow across the track in Bahrain.

FIA - Ferrari Intervention Association

Well not really - but they certainly seem to be very anti-McLaren. Then again, perhaps the boys in black and orange deserve it. Certainly wasn't very sporting to be telling misleading tales regarding passing and encouraging passing while behind the safety car.

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Well two races down and many more to go. We'll see how long it takes for the other teams to adopt the better diffuser and get the big boost of speed that Brawn GP has. Quite an interesting season so far - team standings shows STR-Ferrari has more points than the factory team, and Toyota pulling in more points than they have collected in the past five seasons combined (well not literally but it sure seems like it). Still amounts to whopping $5M-$7M per point for them, pretty hefty outlay for a company being pounded by the global recession.

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Next week China - BTW - The Official Formula One Site is quite a bit less attractive and useful than it was a few years ago. I don't like that I have to scroll down to see how long until the next race and am inundated with video and ads as the "main thing" I see when I connect.