The other day, I pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot to find a rare “first spot” place to park. Of course, “first spot” means that it was the first place past all of the handicap parking. I’ve got nothing against having spaces set aside for those who are physically incapable; in fact, I’d say it’s a rather considerate thing for a business to do.

Before I could get out of my car, a man and his wife parked in the handicap space next to me. I saw their handicap parking permit hanging from their rear view mirror. I specifically looked for it because I get really upset whenever physically capable people intrude on the handicap spots.

Not thinking much about what I had seen, I started to get out of my car, but I had to wait. The woman in the car next to me was trying to pry herself from the confines of her Chevy’s passenger seat. I watched, suddenly becoming curious what this lady’s handicap really was. Her husband, of similar width, joined hands with her, and they walked into the store.

There was no wheel chair. There was no walker. There was no cane. There wasn’t even a limp! Then I realized their handicap: they’re fat. I’ve got news for you folks, obesity is not a handicap. And, yes, as someone formerly of that same problem, I can speak as an authority on this issue. Diet and excersize won’t make a paralyzed man able to walk again, but it sure will solve the handicap of obesity.

These folks who are so fat that the government deems them to be handicapped don’t need to be parking in the spots up close to the stores. They do, however, need their own reseved spots. I say that we reserve them the spots as far away from the building as possible and mark them by painting a hamburger on the asphalt.

When your only handicap is that you don’t know how to shut your face and get on a treadmill, you deserve a nice sweaty waddle through the Wal-Mart parking lot in the steamy July heat. Save the handicap spots for the people who are actually handicapped.

I love bumper stickers. For some reason I get great joy when somebody pulls up behind me at a stop light and I can read their lips as they say “Andrew Peterson is my friend. Who is Andrew Peterson?”

So Wednesday on the way home, I saw a bumper sticker that said “MyReallyBadDate.com.” That’s it. Well, being the sick and twisted person that I am, I thought to myself, “Oh how cool. A web site where you can submit stories about how bad some date was. That would be fairly entertaining.” Knowing that I would forget to go look at the site, I quickly wrote down the URL on the back of a gas receipt.

Last night I finally got a chance to go look at the site. At first glance, it appeared to be what I expected. And it had video testimonials. Oh how cool…I get to watch some girl talking about a miserable experience with some guy. Digging a little deeper into the site, I found out what it’s really about: it’s a Bible study group! I literally laughed out loud. Their concept (as I’m able to understand it) is that if you are having lots of bad dates, maybe the problem is you. It’s about time somebody figured that out. Their weekly Bible study claims it teaches you how to have better dates.

Since I’m not exactly a part of Atlanta’s dating scene, this isn’t for me. (And I should add that I know nothing about the folks at North Point Community Church, so if they end up being snake-handling psyco freaks and you get bit by a copperhead, don’t blame me.) But I’ve got to give kudos to them for such a clever marketing angle on their Bible study group. So if you’re looking for a way to have better dates, or if you want to find out if they have any copperheads on hand, check out MyReallyBadDate.com.

It’s really late (or really early, depending on your perspective), and I’ve just finished listening to the 4th and final AP concert of my evening. Tonight was awesome because one of the 4 shows I heard tonight was the first Andrew Peterson show I ever saw. It was October 2001 at CIU in Columbia, SC. It’s amazing how much of that show I actually remember.

Tomorrow’s MDs should be fun. I did a little preview and heard a decent version of Freebird, which probably won’t make the Appendix but was fun listening to anyway.

I’m going to bed now since I have to be up in less than 5 hours. *yawn*

My domain name is a good one. When I bought it way back in 2002, all variations were available. But since that day, this Ron has come along and put up his own site. I find great humor in the fact that they are charging people to be associated with them ($18/$22). Heck, you can be associated with me for half that amount. Paypal only, please.

Their web site says that they’re “always looking for 1 moreron,” but you all know that only I fit the description of moreron. Don’t fall for the hype, folks; they’re just a bunch of people that wish they could be me.

Well, I’ve been quiet for a couple of weeks now. We were out of town in the mountains of Georgia for a week. I would have posted from the cabin, but I couldn’t get a cell signal. So then I would have just used some dial up connection, but there was no phone. Yup, that’s right. No phone, no lights, no motor car; not a single luxury. Well, we did have our car. And I did drive up to Wal-Mart every night to check my email. But I didn’t really have the time to post here.

We went white water rafting during the week, and that was just about the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. I played a lot of pool and beat (and got beat by) a lot of people at the poker table. Fortunately, we were using funny money. It’s especially funny for the cousin who bet big without seeing his cards. He won a few hands that way, but he’s no Mel Gibson.

Do you need a real estate hotline? If you’re a real estate agent, I bet you could use one.

It looks like Google is finally updating PRs today. It’s about time…

If you’re into SEO and keep an eye on your Page Rank, I’d be interested to know your PR from earlier this week compared to your PR after today’s update (with any changes you’ve made in the meantime).

The other night, while listening to some of the Andrew Peterson bootlegs for Appendix A, I came across a taped recording of a radio broadcast. It was the day that “Carried Along” released, and Andrew and company were in the studio of an Orlando CCM station for the morning show. The thing about that recording that stood out the most to me was how terribly awful the female radio personality was. She was bad beyond my ability to explain. (And, no, I’m not going to say the woman’s name or the radio station.)

Today, here in NW Atlanta, I was on my way to lunch. The car in front of me had Orlando area tags and a bumper sticker that had the radio station’s frequency with something like “Positive Hit Radio” under it. I laughed because I’m probably the only person in Atlanta who knows just how bad that radio station is.

In other news, I’ve been tearing through these MDs lately. My current count says I’m on the 54th recording, so I should be finished up with the initial listen a little ahead of time. Then comes the more time consuming process of pulling stuff off of tapes and MDs and assembling a CD for Andy. More on that later…

In listening to the AP stash this weekend, I crossed the halfway mark.

I also found the first recording of Andy that was painful to hear. It was a radio interview done the day “Carried Along” was released. Andy & the gang were great, but I wanted to strangle that female radio personality. She was obnoxious, annoying, had a terrible radio voice, and was trying to be much cooler than she really was. I’m really glad that recording is done. Hopefully, that’s the last of the unbearable recordings, and I can get back to the good stuff.

The moral of this story is that if you’re in the northern part of Florida, stick to the CD player. You’ll be glad you did.

For several reasons, at my office, we’ve pushed off the move to Active Directory. I realize this should (could) have been done 5 years ago, but we waited. Now, under threat of audit from people who don’t know IT from a box of cereal, we’ve made the move. Amazingly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had suspected.

I don’t know if Microsoft is finally figuring out how to do things, or if they’ve just spent 5 years making the upgrade work. Either way, I’m fine with it.

I’ve got to keep WINS around for a little while still, and I’m having to pull some strings with DNS to make that seamless, but overall, I think this was a move in the right direction - even if for the wrong reason.

Kudos to Penrod the Cisco god who helped see that it all went smoothly.

Here in Georgia, we have a new law. And though I’m not totally familiar with the exceptions to it, I do know that it prevents smoking in most restaurants during most times of the day.

I hate smoking; it’s got to be the dumbest thing you can do. Sure, I can understand how old people got addicted back before it was known that smoking gives you cancer, but anybody who starts smoking, knowing they’ll get cancer from it, is an idiot. That said, I disagree with the Georgia smoking ban. The government has no place telling restaurant owners to disallow smoking.

If a restaurant chooses to allow a smoking section, fine. If that smoking section causes discomfort to non-smokers (like me), fine. Let the non-smokers eat elsewhere. And the opposite works as well: if a restaurant chooses to be all non-smoking, the smokers can choose to eat where they cannot smoke, or they can go elsewhere. But the government telling business owners that they must be all non-smoking is wrong.

Ok, that was all my opinion that I wanted to get out before I tell you the story about what happened last Friday. For lunch on Friday (July 1, the day the ban started), a coworker and I went to Texas Road House for lunch. While we were waiting to be seated, these 4 old women (who smelled like they had been smoking all week - in the same clothes) came in and requested the smoking section. When told that there was no smoking section, one woman - their spokesperson, I assume - became angry. “What?! You don’t have smoking?!” The hostess explained the law to this cancer patient-to-be. Apparently this lady was too busy smoking for the last 6 months that she had totally missed all of the news coverage on the smoking ban.

So, with great pleasure and much laughter, our lunch hour was topped sitting across the room from these sour old women, furious because they had to go 45 minutes without a cigarette. Maybe this law isn’t such a bad idea after all…