
Evidence we will again kick the Iraqis’ butts into the Stone Age
I found this interesting quote in a Fox News article:
Maj. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer with the inspectors, said Iraq was interested in resolving outstanding issues before Blix and ElBaradei make their next report to the Security Council on Feb. 14.
Outlining the Iraqi position, Amin suggested that Baghdad would not oppose flights by U-2 aircraft, as requested by the United Nations, as long as the United States and Britain stop patrols over the “no-fly” zones of southern and northern Iraq while the spy planes are in the air.
This way, he said, Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries would not mistake the reconnaissance plane for American and British jets and fire on it.
Apparently the Iraqis can’t tell the difference between a plane that flies at 80,000 feet versus one that flies at 30,000 feet. Not that it really matters, since (1) they aren’t supposed to be shooting at them anyway, and (2) even if they did shoot against a U-2, they’d just prove that they aren’t willing to have overflights anyway.

Fun Links for the End of the Month
Have you made the switch?
No one gives GWB enough credit for going after terrorists (slightly vulgar and potentially offensive).
I don’t want to ruin the story for you, but Frodo failed.
Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to, Ba-zoo-ka, Kar-toff-el-ka-none.
One marshmallow to rule them all…
They needed a science experiment to figure this out?

The Best Super Bowl Commercials Ever …
… were not seen in Super Bowl XXXVII. However, this year had some pretty good ones. The best ever, in my opinion, was the Frog Assassination series a few years ago from Budweiser. Read on for what I did this year on America’s favorite holiday.
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Punch it, Chewie!
We got DSL access at work today. I feel a bit like I’ve been piloting the Millenium Falcon in Episode 5: it never goes as fast as you want when you want it to, it takes forever to get it repaired so that it can go fast, but when it goes, IT GOES! We have all but one computer running Windows 2000. The one that doesn’t runs NT 4, and needs to be shot with a large caliber assault rifle. It gave me the most trouble, but when I got it going, everything was turning up roses. Now we can finally download all the updates we need, as welll as upload the new FRED versions. Today, although it had its rough spots, ended well.

The Dire Need for Source Code Commenting
I had a bad experience at work today. I was given the assignment of generating help files for our users that covered the new scripting capability in FRED. I found my task very difficult because of one simple thing: I could not understand the code I was documenting. It had no explanation of what the code was intended to do or what it actually did or why it looked like it did. I am partially through the assignment, and I will complete it, but it would be a lot easier if the comments were more clear. This article on Freshmeat.net explains my sentiments exactly. Far too often I have seen code that does not explain itself in plain English. I am tired of it, and I want to encourage any programmer reading this to thoroughly comment their code so that its functionality is clear to even the most inexperienced reader.

On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen
What do you get when you mix Susan Ivanova, Star Wars, and Horatio Hornblower? You get Honor Harrington, a blatant (but very good) mix of old style seafaring with space combat and science fiction.
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