Friend Tom Broderick, Executive Director of the Construction Safety Council, advises that the 18th Annual Construction Safety & Health Expo will be held on February 12-14, 2008, at the Donald Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. Hot sessions at the conference will include Fall Protection, Electrical Hazards, Silica Hazards, Ergonomics, Environmental Hazards, and Workers' Compensation. Detailed information is available at the CCSC web site: www.buildsafe.org.

Time to re-register with the National Do Not Call Registry. This effort to put yourself out of the reach of the fax merchants and telemarketers will be repaid with time saved in the long run. Go to www.donotcall.gov to register all of your phone, fax and cell phone numbers for the next five years. If you don't want to go on-line, you can call 888-382-1222 from the line you wish to protect. Either way, come 2012, you'll have to go through the same process again to get another five-year break.

The huffing and puffing is all over, and Illinois has a new law on the books which will go into effect January 1st. Senate Bill 500 was signed into law by Governor Blagojevich last Summer. Better known as the Smoke Free Illinois Act, the new law makes Illinois the 22nd state to enact an indoor smoking ban. The Act prohibits any smoking in all public places and in any place of employment. Moreover, it also bans smoking outdoors within 15 feet of any entrance, exit or window of a public place or place of employment. The bottom line is…no smoking in or near any bar, restaurant, workplace, meeting room, bowling alley, casino, stadium, taxicab, shopping mall, or other enclosed area. Just about the only places left for smokers will be their own homes and cars. Smokers will be able to continue lighting up legally in private residences, autos, outdoors, private nursing homes, home offices not open to the pubic, retail tobacco shops, and certain hotel rooms. For employers, the new state smoking ban requires those in charge of the workplace to post "No Smoking" signs or the international symbol inside and at every entrance of the public place or place of employment. Yes, all ashtrays must be removed from areas where smoking is prohibited.

What will be the penalty if you get caught violating the law by the Smoke Cops? Smokers will face costs ranging from $100.00 to $250.00. Businesses will pay between $100.00 and $250.00 for a first violation, then $250.00 for a second violation within a year.

This may be a good time to quit anyway, if you're a smoker. Aside from the health risks, a pack of cigarettes now costs $5.23.

In Illinois, 24 percent of adults and 29 percent of the youth currently smoke.

MSN Money readers recently ranked the worst customer service companies in America. You might not find it too amazing that banks, cellular services, and cable TV outfits most heavily populated their "Bottom 10" ranking of companies doing the poorest job of satisfying customer problems. Culprits (remember, this is a #10-to-#1 ranking, making #1 the worst) identified were: (10) Direct TV, (9) Wells Fargo, (8) Verizon, (7) Wal-Mart, (6) Citibank, (5) AT&T, (4) Time Warner Cable, (3) Comcast, (2) Bank of America, and (1) -- drum roll, please -- Sprint.

Bargain of the Month Tip…for those of you who are swamped with a ton of photos on their computer and no real system to organize or find them. Just do a Google search for "Picasa" and download this wonderful free software. It will allow you to find all the pictures on your computer, list them on one screen, organize them, edit them, and add special effects. It's nice, it's easy, and -- best of all -- the price is right!

Get your gas station money's worth:

1. Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool. All service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground, and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline. When it gets warmer, gasoline expands, so if you're filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not a gallon.
2. If a tanker is filling the station's tank at the time you want to buy gas, do not fill up. Most likely, dirt and sludge in the tank is being stirred up when gas is being delivered, and you could transfer that dirt from the bottom of their tank into your car's tank.
3. Fill up when your gas tank is half-full (or half-empty), because the more gas you have in your tank the less air there is. Gasoline evaporates rapidly, especially when it's warm, so you want to minimize evaporation.
4. When filling up, do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to the high setting. Pump at the slow setting to minimize vapors created while you are pumping. Otherwise the return path for vapor recovery from gas that already has been metered will suck more gas vapor back into the underground tank, giving you less gas for your money.