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 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

Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye. Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.

Sometimes people fail to recognize and respect human rights because they have self-interested motives for doing so. In most cases of exploitation, for example, the fundamental failing is moral, not intellectual.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

It’s easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

No other teacher in the world [but Jesus] ever said that it would take a violent death to clarify his teachings.

The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

God commands us and sets limits for us not because He is out to make life difficult or to take away our fun. God commands because he loves us and does not want us to be trapped in the painful realities of sin and evil.

The more project management you do the less likely your project is to succeed.

Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.

Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think.

Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it.

The good old days are now.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

In democracies, the welfare state is the beginning, and the police state the end. The two merge sooner or later, in all experience, and for obvious reasons.

This triangle of truisms, of father, mother[,] and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

Literalism is simply not an effective way to extract meaning from the Bible.