Apparently AIG just doesn’t get it.

First, we give them $87 Billion dollars to keep the doors open.

Then they spend half a million dollars on a luxury trip for insurance agents.

Then they apologize and ask for another $35 Billion to keep the lights on.

Then they spend $86,000 for a hunting trip to England. Apparently this time actual AIG executives went along for the fun.

I want all of the money we’ve given them back. We can take it in cash or equipment. Either one will work. I don’t care if their business fails and is chopped up and sold to the highest bidder on the courthouse steps. Don’t come to us with your Gucci hat in hand and ask for money then use some of it to take clients to a spa or hunting.

They can’t have spent much of the money yet, but we’ll be nice and give them 24 hours to get it to us.

If we don’t get it, this happens:

Apparently, Southern California is burning, again. Just like it burned last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that, ad infinitum.

OK, let’s get something straight. Southern California is a relatively arid area, and has been for quite a while. Wildfires have been occuring there long enough that the native people of the area used it to manage the land.

In the past few decades, it’s become commonplace for people to build neighborhoods in the areas that formerly burned without causing massive destruction to buildings and/or people. Now, year after year, we’re told how thousands of acres of Southern California burn up houses and schools.

Why are we shocked? Why is this in the national news? Houses and neighborhoods are being built in a semi-desert next to kindling, and we’re supposed to be surprised when said kindling bursts into flame and takes housing developments with it?

Someone please tell me why I’m supposed to be interested in this. To me, it’s like the people who build a village on the slopes of an active volcano, and then seem shocked when their village is destroyed in an eruption.

Come on, people. Don’t rebuild neighborhoods in perenial fire areas. Just don’t give out the building permits. Don’t insure them. Don’t approve the mortgages.

I commented on this earlier. An Ohio man was arguing that his obesity made it impossible to execute him without the act going into the “cruel and unusual” area.

Apparently, the Supreme Court disagreed. Today, the state of Ohio executed him via lethal injection.

I’m not going to say I’m happy about this. As I stated before, I’m not a fan of the death penalty. And it’s saddening to think of the suffering he caused his victims, their families, and his family in the years since his crime. His death won’t erase that pain.

I’ll remember him and everyone he hurt in my prayers tonight, and I ask that all of you do the same. I may feel that his execution was justified by his actions, but I don’t have to like it.

Spent today trying to diagnose one of those “it’s slow and I don’t know why” problems on one of our servers. We’ve actually been trying to diagnose this for the past few weeks, but it came to a head today.

This afternoon we had exhausted all of our other options, and senior management was starting to breathe down our necks to figure this out. We decided to just re-install the OS on the server and see what happened.

The re-install went fine, as did re-installation of the database and app. But when we fired the database back up, noone could connect to it. We and our DBA’s spent hours trying one thing after another, and eventually called the vendor.

All this time the customer is getting antsier and more vocal, and we’re starting to get phone calls from management.

Finally, the DB vendor comes back with some arcane switch to set. The DBA makes the change, bounces the database, and the problem magically goes away.

We’ll see how performance looks in the morning, but I’m not hopeful.

Got home 4 hours late tonight. Dinner was waiting in the microwave, and the kids were finishing up their evening rituals prior to bed. I got a few minutes with them before they headed to bed, then had a few minutes with the Irish Woman before she started to yawn.

I’m currently enjoying an adult beverage and watching Monday Night Football that the Irish Woman was considerate enough to record for me. Got to love a woman who knows what you like.

Blackfive opened a wound on some commenters this morning.

Basically, there’s a tradition in the armed forces for deployed soldiers to lose their significant other while they’re gone. Also happens while a soldier is off at training, or even when they just leave their hometown to go the military in general.

Happened to me, and it’s happened to soldiers since an ape picked up a club and went across the river to beat up another ape.

For those of you who are deployed, I hope this never happens to you.

Junior Bear and I just finished watching the Arizona/Dallas game. What a great defensive game!

The OT win by Arizona on a blocked kick was the greatest play I’ve seen all season.

Junior Bear is a Dallas fan for some reason, so we watched this game. For some reason, it seems that every Dallas game I watch this year, they lose.

Apparently everyone else on the Internet is already listening to this, but I’ve just discovered Dan Carlin. Two outstanding podcasts. I’ve listened to all of his available Hardcore History stuff, and then I listened to the last few episodes of Common Sense.

He talks like a normal guy, and discusses things that most other commentators either don’t or refuse to do in a non-partisan way.

He talks politics without turning it into a mud throwing session, which I really appreciate.

Have a listen.

Well, found out the other day that I won’t be going to the quota hunt I requested this year. I asked to go to either the 2nd or 3rd hunts at Taylorsville Lake, which is only about half an hour from home. I would have been able to go for a weekend hunt and still sleep in my own nice warm bed.

Last year, I got chosen for a hunt in Jackson County. It’s about 2 hours southeast of here, and it’s on the northern edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Beautiful country, but it was a haul to get down there.

I was hoping to get something a little closer, but no luck. Better luck next time. I should find out about Fort Knox in the next few weeks.

for human evolution.

Guess this means that Baby Bear is more likely to be a mutant than Junior Bear. I hope his special powers have something to do with paying for college.

Apparently, a member of the teachers union in the UK believes that if a teacher decides to cruise the hallways for a “friend”, that teacher shouldn’t be prosecuted as a sex offender.

No offense, but I send my kids to school with the trust that the teachers won’t hit on them, no matter how old they are. Certain professions, such as educators, police, and doctors, shouldn’t have any kind of relationship with the people they work with, especially the children.

Any teacher who uses the school as a pool of potential mates should be treated as what they are: sexual predators who should be shunned for the rest of their natural lives.