Item one: When I went to get my car, I had to wait for a while until a finance guy was available to take my money. I passed the time by reading my new owner’s manual. My favorite part had to do with the radio’s security system.
Your vehicle’s audio system will disable itself if it is disconnected from electrical power for any reason. To make it work again, you must enter a specific five-digit code in the present buttons. Because there are hundreds of number combinations possible from five digits, making the system work without knowing the exact code is nearly impossible.
Item two: I’ve been looking at getting what Alabama calls a “Distinctive Plate”. It turns out Alabama has a lot of distinctive plates. North Carolina has the most flexible personalized and special plates I’ve ever seen, allowing you eight characters and accepting dashes, ampersands, equal signs, and more. But, c’mon, how can you resist Alabama’s decals? For instance, perhaps you like square (or round) dancing.
Or perhaps you have a kid and would like to take them fishing, if only you weren’t stuck behind the wheel of your car.
Decals go on generic plates. What about custom plates?
If you get a Shriners plate, can you put it on your full-sized car? Among the military plate, there’s one that caught my eye.
Yes, they have a plate for soldiers who were caught in fallout from nuclear tests. Brr. Is there any plate that’d be worse to have?
Presumably you will wait to tell us about your personalized plate until you have it on the car? 🙂
Back when I first read about this particular ghoulish tag, the part that struck me most was that the most sensitive way they could come up with to refer to soldiers who had been exposed to radioactive fallout (much of it by our own country and our ill-conceived tactical-nuke tests, natch) was as “Atomic Nuked Vet”s. There’s something about that phrase, “Atomic Nuked” which seems like it’d be happier in a campy sci-fi movie than as an honor for those who suffered grievous injury in the service of their country.
Geof: You’ve got it.
Bishop: I didn’t know about the tag until I looked at a drop-down list of all tags. “Atomic Nuked,” since it began with an “A”, was near the top. “Surely that can’t be what I think it is,” I muttered.
Thanks for reminding me that in a few weeks, I will have to get an Alabama tag for our 2 cars.