Sometimes I Wonder...

I'm just now getting around to responding to a letter I received in June of this year. That letter came from an insurance / investment group in Fort Payne, Alabama, and was hand addressed with my father-in-law's name. Inside the envelope was a business card, a company flier, a response card, and a personally signed letter with the following initial information:

RE: "STOP PAYING LIFE INSURANCE PREMIUMS FOREVER"

Recently I received your reply card requesting information on the above topic. Enclosed please find the information as promised to you.

My letter of response:

To the "person" in charge:

You sent this material for <Father-in-law's name> to my address earlier this year. You stated (LIED) that you "had received your reply card..."

<Father-in-law's name> died in November 2005. His name is only associated with my address because of that death.

I suggest you find a better mass mailing database. The one you used for this mailing only confirms one of two things:

You're cheap.

or

You're stupid.

Your choice.

Sincerely,

Byron Todd

I mailed the original contents and my response back to the "person". I was seriously tempted to use the word moron or idiot instead of "person".

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Bad Dining Experience

I sent the following letter today. I've edited out some of the personal information in what is displayed below. Just writing up that letter brought up bad memories, and I, for one, am glad to put this behind me. Though I still won't visit the local Chick-fil-A's.

Byron Todd

Chick-fil-A
1008 South 4th Street
Gadsden, AL 35901


To Whom It May Concern:

I'm writing to tell you about a horrible experience thrust upon my family and me a while back. <name removed>, I believe, was the person solely responsible for this incident. It may not be remembered by her, but it will be remembered my family and me for a while. As far as I know, our patronage to the local Chick-fil-A restaurants has ceased and will not continue for the foreseeable future.

The date was September 25 of this year. I remember it well because it was my son's fourth birthday, and he wanted to eat at Chick-Fil-A. We had a party planned in Birmingham for the following Saturday, so the only people to come to this dinner, the only people invited to this dinner were my parents and my wife's mother. Let me reiterate that: a dinner with one child, one baby, and five adults. No other guests, no other invitees. We showed up at Chick-fil-A for that dinner, and were pleasantly surprised to see that it was "Family Night". We - and I'm speaking authoritatively for everyone invited - had no idea that Chick-fil-A had anything planned for that night. Nor did we have any plans to disrupt anything or anyone else.

However, my son had been carrying around a few balloons with him that day (which he had taken with him to pre-school), and <name removed> assumed the worse. I can only guess that she believed that we had a large party with lots of children on the way because the way we were treated - accosted or assaulted is a more appropriate word - showed that she assumed the worst. I believe she made the bad assumption and compounded it by not wanting and not caring to listen to anything my wife or I had to say. A simple question or questions would have cleared up the matter. Her confrontation with my wife and me showed that she did not want us there. When I told her that I could tell someone who knew Truett Cathy about this incident, she said "Fine, tell him!" and stormed off. I was wrong about that person's relationship with Truett Cathy, but not about their closeness to the Cathy family. My cousin is <name removed> and she said that the whole incident sounded too surreal and out of character for <name removed>. I don't know nor do I really care at this point.

What everyone in my family - including family which did not attend - got from that incident is that she absolutely hated our presence and our possible patronage at that time, that she did not want us there. Although we did eat a very bitter meal there, I can state that she will be rewarded with that wish - neither my wife or I will visit the local Chick-fil-A's. As far as I know, neither my parents nor my mother-in-law are planning to come by there again as well. If we wish to have Chick-fil-A, we will simply visit another one in another city.

Sincerely,



Byron Todd

PS. I should mention that the assistant manager witnessed the whole incident - including the storming off of <name removed> - and I believe he realized that <name removed> had made a mistake. He went out of his way to smooth over the incident and tried to make us as welcome as possible. He brought ice cream by the table later for my son, he tried to give ice cream to the adults at our table, and he gave a coupon for future ice cream. However, <name removed> was more memorable. We don't need this coupon as it says it is valid at "Chick-fil-A of Gadsden".

In my 37 years of life - including the 20 some-odd years that my memory serves - I can't remember another single restaurant which did not want someone to celebrate a birthday there. Not a solitary one. It seems to me that every other restaurant - from McDonald's to Ruth's Chris - go out of their way to make birthday celebrations fun and memorable. But good memorable...

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Started A New Book...

Dad bought me Stephen J. Nichols' "For Us And For Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church" while we were up at Hippensteal's Mountain View Inn in Gatlinburg, TN.

So far, all I can say is "Wow!" I was intrigued into wanting this book by a post on Desiring God's blog. That post says it so much better than I can.

I'm only 34 pages into the book and I can't wait to get back to it. Highly recommended.

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Miscellaneous Post...

This is a "catch-all" post: In the past week, I've setup the church for podcasting and move quite a bit more information on to the Grace Bible Church Wiki.

The podcasting is pretty cool. I use my laptop and Audacity to record the unbalanced output of the pastor's wireless microphone. After recording the sermon, it's just a matter of a quick conferral with Dean to find out any edits he might want made (removing extra silence on the the tail end of the sermon, or any pre-sermon notices given). In all, I can take the raw audio and have it ready in less than thirty minutes for publishing. After that, I use a PHP script installed on the rbcgrace.com server called "Podcast Generator". It's pretty slick in every way - except that I can't upload via PHP due to some weird connection error with large uploads (looks like a BellSouth problem.) Regardless, I can upload via FTP to and then Podcast Generator is smart enough to recognize that a new MP3 is ready to publish. I have a URL that I then goto that pings the iTunes store to state that a new podcast is available.

As far as the wiki work, whew! I've been quite busy. Setting things up initially takes some organization and then adding the content is just a bit more work. No problems though. I do enjoy seeing the end result.

As a result, I haven't been posting about my Bible Reading progress. (Still going!) But I am collecting favorites and blurbs about specific verses in Psalms for a later blog posting.

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