If microwave ovens are based on radio frequencies, which affects H₂O (water) at the atomic level, why does it take longer to microwave more stuff?  If I heat a mug of water to make tea, it usually takes about 70 seconds in my microwave to get it hot enough.  But if I put 2 mugs in, it takes nearly twice as long (2 minutes or more).

It’s not like the extra mug/water is absorbing the “waves” which essentially pass through them. That would be akin to saying someone would have to talk louder (or longer) in order to be heard every time another person walked into the room.

I tried buying some ad placements on Facebook, but it keeps rejecting my attempt to make a purchase, claiming that the address I’m entering is wrong.  I called my bank and they verified that they do see multiple authorization attempts for $1.01, all of which were approved by the bank but not cleared by Facebook.  So clearly my CC bank is approving the authorizations, but Facebook’s system is too stupid to handle it.

I tried to find a phone number to contact Facebook, there is none to be found on their site, so I used their customer support form page, which of course will likely never get responded to.  I looked up their domain records and found a number there, but when I called it was an automated voicemail “we’ll get back to you” system, so they’re highly unlikely to get back to me on that, although I did leave my contact info.  My bank said they can’t find a phone number associated with the authorization attempts until (unless) the transactions go through.

I could try using my personal credit card instead of my business credit card, but I hate filling out expense reports.  Yes, even when you run your own company you’ve got to generate expense reports for yourself to keep the books straight.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this experience.  I found some other related write-ups:

• http://www.urbanpit.com/2008/07/faceless-at-facebook.html
• http://fvrit.com/archive/2008/05/08/facebook-advertising-sucks.aspx

UPDATE: After reading some stories about people having their ads and credit cards banned, and even their accounts cancelled based on ad purchases, I figued it would be best if I created a second Facebook profile solely for ad placements.  Well, guess what?  Facebook won’t even let me create such an account because I keep getting the error “Please enter a valid email address.” even though I am entering a valid email address.

I’m starting to think that Facebook is all smoke & mirrors.  “100 million members” my ass - I would be willing to bet that 80 million are automated accounts and, of the remaining 20 million, less than 25% are actually active enough to count as members.  Don’t get me wrong, Myspace isn’t any better, but is it too much to expect that a company with a claim of such a huge membership level actually be capable enough to ensure the most simplistic features of its service actually work?