Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Obama Appoints Sotomayor to Supreme Court

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President Barack Obama (D) has made his first Supreme Court appointment, nominating Sonia Sotomayor to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Justice David Souter at the end of the current court session. Sotomayor, if confirmed by the Senate, would be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sotomayor currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which has jurisdiction over New York, Vermont, and Connecticut. She was originally appointed as a U.S. District Court judge in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush (R) before being appointed to the 2nd Circuit court by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1998. She is of Puerto Rican descent and grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, New York.

It is expected that Sotomayor will be confirmed by the Senate, where the Democratic Party currently holds a strong majority. She is expected to take her seat before the beginning of the next Supreme Court session in October.

No Birthday Parties in the Birthday Party Area

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birthday-partyCounty government at its finest.

After receiving 25 million dollars in bonds in 2006, and another 77 million dollars in 2008, the Fairfax County Parks Authority—apparently still unable to fund the creation of attractive, professional signage—put this little gem up in the ice cream shop at Burke Lake Park.

The park, one of the flagship parks of the Fairfax County park system, apparently prohibits holding birthday parties in ‘birthday party areas.’ That’s right. If you’re planning to have a birthday party at Burke Lake Park, be sure not to hold it in areas designated for birthday parties.

I figure that they want you to hold birthday parties in the lake, so the geese can hold their gatherings in the birthday party areas. Makes perfect sense. I’m sure it’s some kind of environmentalist conservation thing.

N. Korea Conducts Nuclear Test (Updated)

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While U.S. media initially reported an ‘earthquake’ had struck North Korea, foreign media including the BBC broke the news that North Korea had conducted an underground nuclear weapons test late yesterday. The reclusive totalitarian country conducted its first underground nuclear weapons test in 2006 and has conducted long range missile tests as recently as April of this year. Early reports indicate that this underground detonation was significantly more powerful than the 2006 test, and was comparable in its power to the U.S. weapons used during World War II in attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

South Korean leaders have already met in emergency sessions and several countries including Japan have called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, which will occur today. North Korea’s test has been denounced by President Barack Obama (D) as a threat to international peace and a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is unclear at this point what action, if any, will be taken by the world community against North Korea for its ongoing offensive weapons development programs.

Crazy, Busy Weekend

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I hope everybody is having a great Memorial Day weekend so far and, most of all, I hope you have taken some time to consider the sacrifices that our soldiers, airmen, and seamen have made in defense of American freedom.

My weekend has been abnormally busy, but it’s been good so far. The last few weeks have been very busy and stressful, so this weekend was my chance to get caught up on all the ‘like-to-dos’ that had been put to the wayside. On Friday I left work early and used the afternoon to get some general maintenance work done on my computers and get a couple remaining bugs quashed on my web site, before meeting with the folks at our church to volunteer to help out with their site.

Yesterday Melissa was working at the Dekka store downtown, so after dropping her off I embarked on a nice, long bike ride—ended up being about 41.5 miles. I rode the entire Mount Vernon Trail from Roosevelt Island in the north to Mount Vernon in the south, then back north to the Four Mile Run Trail. From there I headed west on the Four Mile Run Trail and connected to the Washington & Old Dominion Trail (through the new crossing under I-395 . . . nice!). I continued north-west on the W&OD to the Mary Custis Trail, then followed it west back to my starting point at Roosevelt Island. I’ve been neglecting my target of riding 30 miles per week, and it felt good to get back out there. That ended up eating a lot of my day though, since after the drive home from the ride and showering and so on it was late afternoon (and I was really tired). I ended up going to bed pretty soon after picking up Melissa and returning home.

Today I helped Melissa out with a photo shoot in the morning, we went to Mass, visited my Grandma, and then—in an exciting end to our Sunday—met with our Realtor and builder’s sales manager to go over the builder’s counter-offer.

Long-story-short, we put in all the paperwork to accept the counter-offer with a slightly higher down-payment and slightly-higher monthly payment than what we offered the other day, but it’s still a very good price for the house. Assuming the lawyers and so-on all review and approve (which is pretty much a sure-thing), the house is ours. Exciting times! We’re putting $10,000 down immediately, and the remaining $6,000-or-so will be paid in increments between now and the closing date (October/November).

Tomorrow, the schedule is pretty open. Really all we have firmly scheduled is that we’re going to (finally) see the new Star Trek movie. Being a big Star Trek fan, it’s been pretty excruciating to have not seen it yet but there’s been too much other stuff going on!

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Home Shopping: Offer Made!

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offerlettertownhouse-lot2townhouse-lot1I mentioned a few days ago that Melissa and I had found a yet-to-be-built townhouse that is in a reasonable price range (at least, by Northern Virginia standards) and were working with a Realtor and a sales manager with the builder to see if we could make it work with our finances. Well, things are proceeding. We have put in an offer to purchase the house for $300,000 (again, by NoVA standards, that’s very cheap for a new townhouse).

The offer, if accepted, would be very generous on the builder’s side. They would accept about 2/3 of the down-payment initially with the rest due at closing (which looks like it’ll be in October/November), would cover virtually all of the closing costs, and pay for our mortgage insurance. The monthly payment would work out to be roughly $1,800, which is only $400 more than our little two-bedroom apartment’s rent.

If the offer is accepted as-is, we’re committed. If the offer is not accepted, the builder would make a counter-offer and we would (hopefully) negotiate something we can all live with. Of course, if the builder won’t give enough for everything to work out with our finances, we’ll have the option to walk away. We’re only committed if the offer is accepted as-submitted.

The previous entry, of course, shows the artist’s conception of what the house will look like and a floor plan. The pictures here are the offer letter, the empty lot where the house will be, and the sign marking the property. We should know whether it’s ours within a week or so.

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.