Switch to Cingular Done, and Other News

Posted January 18, 2006, 8:29 p.m.

So, everything went pretty much according to plan this past weekend. We stopped by the Cingular store here in Fairfax on Sunday, but they were having a network problem so we moved on to the store in Fair Oaks Mall. The store at Fair Oaks, however, was out of the phone I wanted, so the poor guy had to drive to the Fairfax store to pick one up and bring it back while Melissa dragged me around the mall for 20 minutes.

Regardless, it was painless overall and I walked out with a brand new Palm Treo 650. A few hours later, calls to our normal phone numbers were coming through on the new Cingular phones. All is well.

The new phone is named Katy II (being a Palm OS handheld, it made sense to rekindle the name of my old Handspring Visor Pro). I’m really happy with it so far, and having my email and the internet on my phone is pretty cool (not to mention all the standard PDA functions).

Katy II

In other news, Melissa and I each had our physical and dental checkups on Monday. My physical was just fine, but I’ll need to go back to have some fairly minor dental stuff done. As for Melissa, well, you can read about her health escapades in her blog.

The next (and hopefully final, for now) big thing coming up is the impending Honda purchase. The exact date is contingent on a number of things, but it should be happening over the next few weeks. More information as the time approaches ;-).

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

There has never been a society or a nation without God. But history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became indifferent to God, and died.

For generations, it was a paradox that the Chinese and the Indians prospered almost everywhere around the world, except in China and India.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.

For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil. For their worshipers either rave in exultation, or prophesy lies, or live unrighteously, or readily commit perjury; for because they trust in lifeless idols they swear wicked oaths and expect to suffer no harm.

As a rule, we can’t always tell the difference between the people who are far smarter than us and the people who are dumber. Both groups make choices we can’t understand.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.

We humans are judgmental people, and we can’t turn off that feature of our brains. Nor would we want to do so, since judging our environment is what keeps us alive.

Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Only theology has as its essential subject matter the infinite, the transcendent, and the eternal. The subject might exhaust our inner resources, but we can never exhaust its inner riches.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Okay, so I lost The Tonight Show, but I’ll show them . . . I’ll stop shaving.

There is an implicit but astonishing arrogance in the idea that all the apostles, all the church fathers[,] and all the millions of ordinary Christians were fundamentally mistaken about Christ for nineteen centuries, and only a few theologians, sitting at their desks, in a very different culture, nineteen centuries later, finally understood him.

But eventually I came to accept the truth: I am overweight. This is not my fault. My body, without consulting me, has been converting the food I eat into fat, as opposed to something I can actually use, such as toothpaste.

Yet there is no greater freedom than that of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, renouncing the attempt to plan and control everything to the last detail, and instead letting him enlighten, guide, and direct us, leading us wherever he wills.

The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

God therefore neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills to permit evil to be done; and this is a good.