Site Notice: Scheduled Weekend Down-Time [Updated]

Posted June 29, 2006, 6:55 p.m.

Our hosting provider, PowWeb, got bought out by another company earlier this year. As part of the management and technology change, all PowWeb customers are having their sites migrated to an improved server environment.

The good news is that this should improve responsiveness and uptime for our sites. The bad news is that Off on a Tangent will go down this weekend while I move it through the migration process and make sure everything works correctly on the new server (Melissa’s site should come over with zero-effort; mine requires some extra hand-holding since it’s managed using a content management system & database).

I expect to kick-off the migration Friday afternoon (after 3pm). If all goes smoothly, the site should be back up no later than noon on Saturday. If things go terribly wrong, I still hope to have things back to normal before the end of the weekend. Worst-case, I can roll back to the current server and try again some other time ;-).

UPDATE 7/1: The site was down about 2.5 hours longer than expected, but things seem to be up and running now. Please let me know if you find any problems!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.

Milton Friedman

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

Fulton Sheen

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Jesus Christ

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Henry Ford

I’ve never been tempted to take any of my companies public. Making choices is a lot easier when you have to answer only to yourself.

Donald Trump

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Edmund Burke

The power of the will does not extend to making opposites exist at the same time.

Thomas Aquinas

I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all.

John Adams

If every man had faith, we would need no more laws. . . .

Martin Luther

The health and order of society depend on the rearing of healthy, happy, and well-integrated children. That is why law, though it may take no notice of ordinary friendships, should recognize and support marriages.

Sherif Girgis

A constitution is a compact of a people with their rulers; if the rulers break the compact, the people have a right and ought to remove them and do themselves justice.

Unknown

But these two dramas—becoming a Christian and becoming a Catholic—are two steps in the same process and in the same direction, like being born and growing up.

Peter Kreeft

While the law may not draw classifications based upon mere thoughts, beliefs, or inclination, it can and routinely does distinguish between types of conduct.

U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops

It is false and absurd to say that we should remain in error after we have discovered it.

U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’

Thomas Jefferson

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

Woodrow Wilson

A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.

Robert A. Heinlein

The British parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

George Mason

To countenance abortion is not to respect women’s ‘privacy’ or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die.

Robert George

[Man] can survive in only one of two ways—by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows.

Ayn Rand