For whatever reason, I’ve always assumed that elevators have a safety feature that prevents the doors from crushing people. In other words, if someone gets in the way of the doors while they’re closing, the doors will open up to avoid the obstruction. But how much force does it actually take to trigger this safeguard? […]

Ever buy a bulk pack of something, sock it away in the closet, and then find that it’s basically petrified by the time you’re ready to use it? This happened to me recently, even though the product was nowhere near the expiration date — if it had one at all. Apparently, I would have needed […]

A few months ago, I dropped a water glass while I was in the process of drying it off. The glass shattered into what seemed like a million pieces, and it took a good 45 minutes to clean up the mess. By then, I had finally had it with easily-broken glasses. Without further delay, I […]

Virtually everybody knows that cardboard boxes and other paper-based packaging are recyclable. The same goes for plastic food containers. And in case there’s any doubt, these items usually have a recycling symbol right on the product itself. But what about the items that fall into a gray area, like those cardboard-ish molded trays that come […]

Let’s say your name is John Smith. You decide to sign up for a run-of-the-mill email account. During the registration process, you make a typo when entering the desired email address. So instead of getting johnsmith@example.com, you end up with jhonsmith@example.com. Then, you proceed to use this new email account to correspond with friends, family […]

There’s a display table at the front of my local Trader Joe’s where they promote freshly-made sandwiches, along with cheese spreads and other items. Many of the same products are available elsewhere in the store, but they’re always in a refrigerated case. I had always wondered why the cheese and sandwiches didn’t spoil, and figured […]

A few years ago, they filmed “The Dark Knight” in Chicago. I forget the exact timing, but it was a warm summer month — probably July or August. Fast forward to today, and they’re filming “Transformers 3” here. The temperatures? Consistently around 90 degrees every day, which makes things harder on the actors, extras and […]

The last time I saw a product registration card, I spent a few seconds looking over the form, and then tossed it aside. There wasn’t any enticing reason to fill it out, so I didn’t see the need to spend my time on the task. Assuming that manufacturers want people to fill out their product […]

A few days ago, we got a call from a vendor to say that our corporate credit card was declined for a purchase. We pay off the card every month, and there was plenty of available credit, so this was a rather puzzling turn of events. We called the card issuer, and they said that […]

This past weekend, I spent several hours on hold with a vendor’s tech support department. I was trying to resolve a network configuration issue, and needed to have it fixed before Monday morning. Each time I called them, the operator placed me on hold — even when I was supposedly being transferred to a specific […]