And it’s free.

One striker was struck by a vehicle driving on Greenwich and killed as he crossed the busy street to join his fellow strikers.

In my opinion, Union leaders at Local 733 and District 70 should resign for their inability to comprehend or provide rudimentary safety for their members. Their narrow vision resulted in a highly preventable death.

McCain has gone senile.

I recall reading from history class about coal miners being harassed and beaten by hired thugs any time they complained of poor working conditions. Unions were born, won the fight, and brought with them many concepts that all workers take for granted: the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and benefits.

That’s right: you won.

But Union leaders fight on, demanding more of what they already have: raises, benefits, and secure jobs. And that is why, first, most non-Union people in the community are apathetic or even hostile towards Union leaders; and second, why Union membership and effectiveness is at an all-time low.

The average non-Union worker in our community is perplexed as to why you aren’t happy with a contract that gives pay and benefits better than most other local companies. We also don’t understand why you would risk permanently losing your jobs, in the middle of recession, while needing to feed your families and pay your mortgages.

Furthermore, the global market didn’t exist when Unions were gaining strength in the early 20th century. But there is nothing to prevent HBC from taking your jobs to Mexico or another country. Unions operating with 20th century principles and leadership are ineffective.

Your Union is obsolete.

Obsolete Unions are going to die altogether if you can’t re-invent the concept of Union. I do not harbor any bad thoughts or ill will to you, but I strongly believe that what you are doing is only hurting yourselves and your families.

In addition to this, for almost a month now I have been using the company gym to exercise before work. It’s a brand new gym, including totally private bathrooms/showers. My routine has been pretty effective: wake up, go to work (all of 1 minute away from my house), work out for an hour, shower, start my day in my office. Ta-da!

I would gladly trade the pain in my mouth for the pain I had in my toe.

I laid awake all night, drenched in sweat, unable to fall asleep due to the pain in my mouth. I went to the dentist this morning and he said I had a dry socket. The clot that was supposed to keep food and debris from affecting my jaw bone disappeared, shooting pain in each tooth, down my jaw, and up to my ear. Advil, Orajel, antibitoics, and even Lortab did nothing.

The dentist packed the socket with a small, medicine-soaked gauze that sent even more insane pain through my skull. At 5:00pm, I’m still awake and the pain is unbearable.

I want to continue to work on the house, but I know its counter-productive to recovery to use my rest-time to work. Unfortunately, the house hasn’t changed much - except accumilate more messes - since I went in for surgery. So I’m laid up in bed, watching Daily Show reruns, blogging, and dozing off. While resting, I’ve also been playing Texas Hold’em at MSN Games. There are always people playing so it never takes more than a few seconds to hop into a new game.

I also re-discovered a few websites that I haven’t been to in a while. The first is mint.com. It logs into your bank and credit cards, evaluates balances, sends you alerts, and helps determine how to best manage your debt and finance. It’s all completely free, too.

The other is prosper.com. Prosper is a very cool website to make or loan money. Users are either “lenders” or “borrowers.” Borrowers can ask for money for things such as business loans and debt consolidation. Lenders can submit a bid for all or part of the loan requested by offering money and an APR. As little as $50 can be given by a lender and, if the borrower accepts, the lender will pay back the lender along with interest over 3 years (with no pre-payment penatly). Borrowers and lenders both must be verified to help prevent fraud. Experian gives a credit score to borrowers and borrowers must fill out information to receive a debt-to-income ratio. This helps lenders with establishing risk as well as APRs for their loans. Wikipedia, however, shows that about 10% of borrowers are one or more month late on their payments after 3 months of repayment. Prosper takes a very small fee from both lenders and borrowers. So, after these fees, the average rate of return on 20 loans older than 6 months is 4.89%. Nonetheless, this isn’t a bad ROI - espcially on principles as low as $50.