Lately, I've been having a hard time getting CAPTCHA to work the first time.

Same here. CAPTCHAs seem to be getting more and more annoying for actual humans.

And whose idea was it for ReCAPTCHA to include characters like "1/2" and "3/4"? I don't even know how to type those.

WGA Strike = Less new episodes of popular TV shows = less P2P traffic

Torrents have always been a good indicator of popular shows, this should prove that people will watch less TeeVee when there's less scripted content.