My union story:

I worked non-union construction jobs for the first part of my construction career. Finally, at the urging of a friend who was a union carpenter, I secured a job with one of a small handful of signatory contractors doing very high end work in Marin County, California. I worked for him for a total of a year and a half.

I came to the union as a journeyman (a lot of us did as the carpenter’s union was trying to attract more members) and was not required to go through all the apprentice training that other co-workers did. This created friction between us even though a lot of us were much more skilled than our peers. That fact probably added fuel to the fire. Worse, the union members who HAD done the entire apprenticeship program were the least motivated individuals I have ever worked with. After a year and a half working on all phases of the rebuilding of the Blanding Mansion on Belvedere Island, including concrete form work, framing and finish carpentry, we were finishing out the kitchen when we took delivery of an extremely large kitchen cabinet. I and several others were instructed by the foreman to carry it down the hill and into the kitchen via the back deck. This was the end of my career with the union.

Short story long, we could have used any means possible to get this cabinet down the hill and into the house safely. Instead, the foreman chose to assign too few of us and “cowboy” it into the house, as if we were working on some budget tract home. By the time we were done, my back had a vertebral injury that was the end of my union stint. I was put on light duty, and then mustered out of the company pending evaluation and treatment of my injury which took another year and more. I was told after some weeks that there was no more work for me, a bold-faced lie. I lost almost a year’s work, was in chronic pain for years afterward, and was awarded the grand total of $25,000.00. In and amongst the trials and tribulations that ensued the owner’s wife lied about my job duties to make it seem as if I was not capable of heavier duty work before I came to their company in a bid to lower the award amount I received. Examinations by their physician and mine coincided with the same conclusions proving the injury was very real and problematic to my pursuing a construction career. The final award was a pittance compared to lost wages and heartache and aggravation.

Soon after I was laid off, and while my back was still injured, I was forced to fall back on my contractor’s license and start my own business so I could eat and not lose the home we had purchased a few years before.

I don’t regret starting my own business and am damned glad that I did. The experience is invaluable.

But the last thing I EVER need, is to be lectured by the likes of “John”, or see my hard-earned tax dollars go to supporting a bunch of lazy bastards the likes of which I have worked with.

Fuck a bunch of unions. Assholes.

Just played Spent and got my butt kicked. Loans went unpaid, the gas was turned off… How depressing. For so many people this is no game.

You’re a savvy consumer used to pulling yourself up by your boostraps. So if you were a jobless parent, down to your last $1,000, you could make it work, right? Spent is a new free online “game” that tests to see whether you have what it takes. Put out by the Urban Ministries of Durham, it’s less fun than a sobering dose of reality. I played it and in order to make it through the month I couldn’t let my kid go on field trips and I missed his baseball game in order to take a job helping a neighbor move. Also, I got fired for talking to a union organizer. The gas also got shut off and I drove away from an accident instead of paying the ticket. I had no choice, otherwise I would have gone broke and lost the game.

The Consumerist

I chose the warehouse job because I worked in one for 11 years… but opted out of health care. Ooops.

What do you want to bet lawmakers dabble in the commodities market? Like, right before they decide to pump up the ethanol in gasoline to 15% and force it into airplane fuel…?

Corn is either in almost everything we eat or fed to everything we eat… and -unfortunately- is in the gasoline that powers our vehicles. When the price of corn goes up, so does everything else.

Get ready for higher food prices

Corn prices have risen over the past six months from $3.50 a bushel to nearly $7.

Warnings of higher food prices headed for American supermarkets and restaurants were swallowed easily across much of farm country Wednesday.

The big gulp came when the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that global demand had pushed U.S. corn supplies to their lowest point in 15 years.

The price of corn, which has doubled over the past six months, affects most food products in supermarkets. It’s used to feed the cattle, hogs and chickens that fill the meat aisles.

It is the main ingredient in Cap’n Crunch and Doritos. Turned into syrup, it sweetens most soft drinks and many foods.

Babcock, the Iowa State economist, said the U.S. mandate to increase the use of renewable fuels like ethanol is a major reason why the nation’s corn supply is so low. About a quarter of the nation’s corn crop is consumed by the production of ethanol. The ethanol industry’s projected corn orders this year have risen . . . after record-high production in December and January, USDA said.

It’s big news, the Verizon version of the iPhone. Even though the iPhone4 on Verizon is 3G, people can’t wait for the apps. Pre-sales aside [they sold out in 2 hours], it hits stores tomorrow.
Coincidentally, Verizon has made several moves to throttle customers’ data usage in anticipation of the unprecedented broadband demand.

Verizon is like a new company. They stopped the popular ‘New every 2′ program just before the iPhone debut and also doubled the early termination fee to $350. There’s talk of going to tiered data plans and they have also instituted data caps. If you think that’s only for the top 5%, the rest of us will be subject to ‘optimization’ of our data as well.

As part of our continuing efforts to provide the best experience to our more than 94 million customers, Verizon Wireless is introducing two new network management practices.

We are implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in our network to transmit data files in a more efficient manner to allow available network capacity to benefit the greatest number of users. These techniques include caching less data, using less capacity, and sizing the video more appropriately for the device. The optimization process is agnostic to the content itself and to the website that provides it. While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device. For a further, more detailed explanation of these techniques, please visit www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization

If you subscribe to a Data Plan or Feature on February 3, 2011 or after, the following applies:
Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren’t negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.

Wired spells it out…

And here we thought Verizon’s network technology was better-prepared than AT&T to handle a big crowd of iPhone customers. While our initial tests showed that Verizon was better at making and holding phone calls, its data speeds are slower than AT&T’s. The company must be worried about the effects of an influx of iPhone customers — otherwise, why would it throttle bandwidth like this?

The throttling policy will impact only a small number of users: Verizon claims only the top 5 percent of data hogs will be throttled. (AT&T also previously claimed that a small number of users were hogging a massive amount of network bandwidth before it dropped unlimited data.) But the “optimization” method involves caching less data and resizing video, which “may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device” — and that affects every Verizon customer.

That’s an abuse of the word “unlimited,” which is becoming a common practice in the broadband arena. Comcast used to promote unlimited data as well, but customers reported their service was cut off after exceeding an invisible limit; the broadband provider later switched to monthly data caps.

Actions such as data throttling are symptomatic of an ugly truth about the broadband industry. Internet providers would much rather slow everybody down than invest in more hardware to support more customers.

But just like AT&T, Verizon plans to switch to tiered pricing in the future, according to Stratton. Verizon’s unlimited data plan, available for a limited time, is just another example of bait-and-switch.

They’re in business to make money, but given enough time, the market will judge how well these new changes go over with consumers. Many people are going to wish the iPhone had never come to Verizon…

On the flip side, T-Mobile is battling the Verizon juggernaut with an amazing offer this weekend: if you sign a 2 year agreement, any phone in the store is free. We’re talking high end smartphones… but their tiered data plans can be expensive.

We use Verizon, have for many years. But our contract ran out a couple of years ago…

Arianna Huffington will run the new empire.

AOL has acquired Huffington Post for $315 million in its biggest move since it became an independent company in 2009.

The acquisition will create a new online media conglomerate that already owns news websites TechCrunch and Engadget. According to The New York Times, the deal is worth $300 million in cash with $15 million in stock.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington will be appointed president editor-in-chief of all of AOL’s content. She will not only run The Huffington Post, but will lead AOL’s news, tech, women, local, multicultural, entertainment video and community content businesses in an AOL entity that will be known as the Huffington Post Media Group.

The Huffington Post Media Group will also be in charge of MapQuest, AOL Music, AutoBlog, Patch, Engadget and TechCrunch. Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will be leaving Huffington Post, according to AllThingsD.

“By combining HuffPost with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we’ll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform,” Arianna Huffington said moments ago in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

Mashable

Ms. Huffington announced the merger in a blog post.

We used AOL in the beginning, but didn’t everyone? ‘You’ve got mail!’
It’s obviously a far different animal now than it was 20 years ago when we were familiar with the service. At least the last 10 or so years it’s been struggling to survive in a more tech savvy world. Frankly, I didn’t even know it still existed.
Whether or not this blend will prove beneficial and to whom, remains to be seen.

This is pretty funny, since Leo is only beat out as worst by Virgo… and none of the Leos or Virgos I know have accidents.

Beware Virgo drivers, Allstate data warn

Virgos, known for being practical, industrious and perfectionists, were 700 percent more likely to be in a car accident in the last year than passionate, determined Scorpios, according to Allstate Insurance, which recently compared claims data against the revised astrological calendar.

Scorpios were involved in only 1.5 percent of accidents last year, making them the best drivers on the road. The rest of the list, from best to worst drivers, was Ophiuchus, Cancer, Aquarius, Libra, Aries, Capricorn, Gemini, Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus, Leo and Virgo.

Allstate found that drivers whose Zodiac signs are tied to traits such as compassion, graciousness and resourcefulness had the fewest number of reported accidents.

We’re not insured by Allstate and after seeing this, don’t think we ever will be….

The following was sent to me by Pam. I just read it and was struck by how perfectly I am defined by it, especially this last part:

Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California — and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder.

Of course, I voted accordingly OUT of California. A former business owner, Anglo, and NATIVE CALIFORNIAN who now calls Florida home. The rest is after the jump, and a good and interesting read.

[...]

Make a run for the border toilet.

This is why I don’t do fast food anymore; there’s no telling what might be lurking in that ‘filling’.

Taco Bell doesn’t use beef in their “beef”-based pseudo-Mexican delicacies. They use a gross thing called “Taco Meat Filling” as shown on their big container’s labels—which customers can’t see. The list of ingredients is gruesome:

Water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin (a polysaccharide that is absorbed as glucose), soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate, and potassium lactate.

Oh, and 36% beef. Thirty-six percent—plus all the above making up for the other 64% of the party in your mouth.

According to the USDA, you can’t call this “beef” at all. Beef is defined as “flesh of cattle”. Ground beef is defined as:

Chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without seasoning and without the addition of beef fat as such, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders.

Which is certainly nothing like what Taco Bell is using in their products. That’s the reason why an Alabama law firm is presenting a lawsuit for false advertising, claiming that what Taco Bell claims is “beef” in their commercials is just the aforementioned processed clustermass of disgust. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems they have a very good point.

The USDA says that any food labeled as “meat taco filling” should at least have 40% fresh meat. According to the Alabama law firm, their stuff only has 36% meat.

Gizmodo

My dog’s kibble is better than the mud Taco Hell serves; crude protein, analyzed, is 38%:

Fresh boneless chicken*, chicken meal, fresh boneless salmon*, turkey meal, herring meal, russet potato, peas, sweet potato, fresh boneless turkey*, fresh whole eggs*, fresh chicken liver*, fresh boneless lake whitefish*, fresh boneless walleye*, sun-cured alfalfa, pea fiber, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), organic kelp, pumpkin, chicory root, carrots, spinach, turnip greens, apples, cranberries, blueberries, licorice root, angelica root, fenugreek, marigold flowers, sweet fennel, peppermint leaf, chamomile, dandelion, summer savory, rosemary, vitamin A, vitamin D3, vitamin E, niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, d-calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12, zinc proteinate, iron proteinate, manganese proteinate, copper proteinate, selenium yeast, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Enterococcus faecium.

Puts me off tacos, I can tell you that.