I'm on vacation this week (sort of) so I haven't been keeping up with the World much. I did run across this beauty this morning, though. WOW! If you happen to know who this is, please drop me a line.

This one goes out to News Day Laura. Merry Christmas!

It's not often I get to incorporate Hotness with Guns around here. Enjoy!

Santa's lucky it was just Jack and not Chuck Norris.

Humble Pied: Jessica Hische from Mig Reyes on Vimeo.

1. "There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." ~ C.A.R. Hoare
2. "Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." ~ Martin Golding
3. "Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program." ~ Linus Torvalds
4. "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage
5. "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." ~ L. Peter Deutsch
6. "The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late." ~ Seymour Cray
7. "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves." ~ Alan Kay
8. "Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris." ~ Larry Wall
9. "First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack." ~ George Carrette
10. "People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini stones." ~ Donald Knuth
11. "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." ~ Brian W. Kernighan
12. "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." ~ Bill Gates
13. "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code." ~ Christopher Thompson
14. "I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!" ~ Vidiu Platon
15. "Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success." ~ Tom DeMarco
16. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." ~ Donald E. Knuth
17. "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, 'We're sorry, here's a coupon for two more.'" ~ Mark Minasi
18. "The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability." ~ Randall E. Stross
19. "Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry" ~ Ted Nelson
20. "I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." ~ Alan Kay
21. "It is easier to port a shell than a shell script." ~ Larry Wall
22. "Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption." ~ Keith Bostic
23. "Programming is like kicking yourself in the face, sooner or later your nose will bleed." ~ Kyle Woodbury
24. "PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals." ~ Jon Ribbens
25. "You can't have great software without a great team, and most software teams behave like dysfunctional families." ~ Jim McCarthy
26. "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not." ~ Yoggi Berra
27. "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." ~ Dennis M. Ritchie
28. "Perfection [in design] is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
29. "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." ~ Linus Torvalds
30. "Python's a drop-in replacement for BASIC in the sense that Optimus Prime is a drop-in replacement for a truck." ~ Cory Dodt
31. "Good design adds value faster than it adds cost." ~ Thomas C. Gale
32. "The evolution of languages: FORTRAN is a non-typed language. C is a weakly typed language. Ada is a strongly typed language. C++ is a strongly hyped language." ~ Ron Sercely
33. "When someone says: 'I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done', give him a lollipop." ~ Alan J. Perlis
34. "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." ~ Blair P. Houghton
35. "For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match." ~ Bill Bryson
36. "FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed — it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer." ~ Alan J. Perlis
37. "In the one and only true way. The object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'. (Too many layers)." ~ Roberto Waltman
38. "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense." ~ E.W. Dijkstra
39. "Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline." ~ Bill Clinton
40. "Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language should be like. But Java applications are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like." ~ pixadel
41. "I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing." ~ Oktal
42. "Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job." ~ Mosher's Law of Software Engineering
43. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter." ~ Eric S. Raymond
44. "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone." ~ Bjarne Stroustrup
45. "A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people carrying razors." ~ Waldi Ravens
46. "A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant." ~ Alan J. Perlis
47. "They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." ~ Olav Mjelde
48. "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen." ~ Edward V Berard
49. "Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material." ~ Alan Kay
50. "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." ~ Rick Cook

Via

The Anchoress has another great article this week:

Winter is promising to be a home-heating oil budget-buster and so my husband and I have taken to turning down the thermostat and wearing bulky sweaters all day. I never feel completely warm, though, and last night, as we tried to watch a movie, he had to listen to the Greek Chorus of the Winter of my Discontent:

"Brrr; I'm cold," I said.

He tossed an afghan my way.

A little later: "Why is it so cold in here?"

Another afghan.

"Brrr…"

Finally, feeling chilled to the bone, I announced that the movie All the Colors of Paradise was beautiful and sad and wonderful, but that I'd had enough fun shivering and was headed to bed.

"Why don't you put the big cover on the bed, if you're so cold," my husband called after me.

"I tell ye I won't do it!" I called back.

"The big cover" is for us like "the big knife" in Moonstruck; the tool of last resort in a cold, ice-hard world. It is an enormous, puffy comforter that weighs a ton. You lay "the big cover" on the bed, and you finally get warm, but nothing is ever quite right again. The big cover is not subtle; it knows no nuance. It does not take a variable into consideration. Rather, utilizing the big cover means constant adjustments on our part.

Under the big cover, cuddling gets clammy, and so you sleep apart. The reasonable flannels one wears in winter become unbearably warm, and so you bring out the unreasonable, inappropriate summer sleepwear and beneath the big cover you are mostly comfortable. You can even cuddle, a little.

But if you have to get up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom or get a glass of water, the summer threads in a 60 degree house make you giddy with cold. You jump back into bed, and your now-chilled body hits your spouse like ice-water thrown into a hot shower. There is jumping and shrieking and no one is happy until the big cover gets back into place, and the shivers subside.

It struck me last night that "the big cover" is sort of like "big government." It is a deleterious slab of a "solution" that suffocates us unless we adapt to it, and in truth make ourselves rather uncomfortable in order to accommodate it; once we lay the all-encompassing big cover on the bed, nothing is ever "just right" again.

If we could just let the furnace - which is new, energy-efficient and sort of the "engine" of the house - do its job and heat our not-large rooms to more comfortable levels, we could get by with light sweaters, still conserve energy in relation to past years, and keep the big cover packed in cedar.

But no, our furnace - just like the "engine" of our economy, which is business - is currently doing less than it is capable of doing. Like our economy, it is less energetic, and we are less comfortable, because we are afraid to let it run at full throttle. Like small businesses all over the country, we are experiencing a frigid season, one where we cannot feel comfortable about tomorrow's bills; we are holding on to our money, so we are not "hiring" as much oil.

And that means breaking out the big cover. It is a dubious solution - a vastly imperfect one - and using it does not solve the problems that are making us reluctant to fire up the engine of the house and get things warm and toasty around here.

It feels like the big chill is winning.