Last Saturday, the city hosted a series of ridiculous events for St. Patrick’s day. As a result, there were thousands of extra people lumbering through downtown and generally acting like idiots. No problem, I figured: I would just avoid going where those people would likely congregate, such as bars and restaurants. So when I went [...]

While passing through one of the underground walkways that connect the various buildings in my neighborhood, I noticed a curious series of paper signs on the wall. Each sign indicated that you could reach the commuter train station by walking in the specified direction. The signs also contained the logo for some big trade show, [...]

Living in a big city like Chicago, you quickly become familiar with the best ways to catch a cab, which vehicle types to avoid, and so on. Another basic rule: whether you flag a cab or schedule one in advance, it’s assumed that it will be your own private cab. In other words, that cab [...]

Setting up recurring orders for groceries and other consumables can be a big time saver, but it seems like the subscription services I’ve seen are missing out on some obvious enhancements. For instance, let’s say you are signed up to receive a case of cereal every six months, but you’ve typically been running out sooner. [...]

My local pharmacy recently went through yet another remodeling. Even though the store is only two or three years old, the powers that be have already shoehorned in a big grocery section, raised the shelf heights, and most recently, replaced most of the registers with self-checkout kiosks. However, the self-checkout transition has created an awkward [...]

With many people using a laptop as their primary computer, there’s an ever-growing selection of stands and docking stations designed for making laptops feel at home in various environments. Some of these accessories provide a nearly foolproof ledge or tray that prevents the laptop from being knocked onto the floor. But others leave a lot [...]

Many people live in apartments. The vast majority of those apartment dwellers own a bed. Beds require sheets, and sheets need to be washed. Yet not every set of sheets will fit inside the compact washer and dryer that you typically find in an apartment. Why is this a problem? In short, there’s rarely any [...]

Let’s say you walk up to the front doors of a business, government office, or any other place that you expect to be open during the day. Unfortunately, the doors are locked. How frustrating would you find this experience to be? Although there may be several factors at play, chief among them is whether the [...]

If you’ve been following the weather lately, you may have heard about the huge snowfall in the pacific northwest. I had the bad luck of scheduling a short vacation for that very period, which made the travel challenging, to say the least. While I was sitting at the airport in Chicago and waiting for my [...]

The battery in one of my electronic devices started acting weird recently, so I looked up the problem online. As I quickly learned, a lot of other people were experiencing the same issue. The general recommendation was to bring the battery into the brand’s local store and ask for a free replacement, since the issue [...]