YankeeJim: What needs to stop here is the association of these ads with the meter. There is no association. The ads do not affect the meter at all. There are no ads during the actual game screen and no activity from them until the scorecard is presented.
I'd agree with this YJ, but I can also attest to an increased meter performance with the installation of flashblock plugin. You are correct that it should not be correlated to the ad's, but you can be sure it has filtered out other unnecessary flash objects that have improved the flash efficiency related to the meter.
YankeeJim: The only thing I didn't see was the actual ad itself. The screen still jumped down and the box was there with the (f), just no content.
I think you didn't take the time to configure it properly. This is the default behavior when it is first installed, where it blocks all flash. I'm curious as to the screen resizing and jumping, I didn't see this when the default settings were being used, it blocked all screen adjustments right out of the box. This very well have been due to the AdBlock plugin I have running, which you most likely didn't have installed.
YankeeJim: What I did find hugely annoying was having to click the (f) all over the main page to see anything, including the Log In screen box
Same, this is because you were using the default configuration and had not taken the time to customize what was and was not being blocked. A right click on any blocked object gives you some easy-access options on how to configure them individually.