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

Not even the most powerful propaganda machine in the world can change truth.

Maximilian Kolbe

In every organization there is a considerable accumulation of dead wood in the executive level.

Laurence J. Peter

[A conservative is] a statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a liberal, who wants to replace them with others.

Ambrose Bierce

Every prophet who teaches the truth, but does not do what he teaches, is a false prophet.

Catholic Church

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus Christ

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

Paul the Apostle

Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent.

Holy Bible

Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore.

Milton Friedman

I observed . . . that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And . . . the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin

No matter how formidably communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.

George Washington

Let’s stop blaming each other for things that happened more than twenty years ago. Humans change a lot in two decades.

Scott Adams

As the sun shines on mud and hardens it, and shines on wax and softens it, so too this great miracle of Our Blessed Lord hardened some unto unbelief, and softened others unto belief.

Fulton Sheen

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

John Henry Newman

If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors.

Siddhartha Gautama

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Jesus Christ

For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.

Paul the Apostle

Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

Marion Barry

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.

Salvador Dalí

The greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards. . . .

C.S. Lewis