Whoa! For a second I thought you were going to post something original, but you hid the Reddit crap below the fold. Someday! (I bet not)

Not a hack per se, but when I moved to Chicago from Boston in ’97, I was stunned to discover that people here think dibs is unique to the city. Chicagoans don’t get out much, I guess.

If you happen to be a non-Catholic carnivore (or, to be fair, omnivore, but what’s up with that anyway?), go to your local purveyors of tasteful flesh on Fridays during Lent. They will be so glad to see you. They will often pile high your sandwiches with the product they need to use or lose. My very Catholic city of…

I’ve used the American systems. They’re cheap ancient Android tablets, probably EOLed for everything but this. People can tear a strip off their tinfoil hats and wrap it around the edge to cover the camera if they’re really so worried.

Forgive the unsolicited plug, but I have the same problem, and backed this on Kickstarter and it changed life:

Mpix. I’ve used them for over a decade for canvas wraps, 4x6 snapshots, metal prints, calendars, and many other formats. They follow requests when I need something particular and their color correction has been top-notch. Working on one special project, I contacted customer service to explain my needs, and the rep…

Mpix. I’ve used them for over a decade for canvas wraps, 4x6 snapshots, metal prints, calendars, and many other…

Chicago: If you use the bus tracker and if you make trips that involve making bus connections, the CTA has a page that lets you make your own tracker pages that will show how long you’ll wait for your connection.

We need to spend some NASABucks to put a satellite with a bunch of awesome sensors and cameras into perpetual total solar eclipse. (I understand that has nothing to do with lunar eclipses, but just wanted to throw the idea out there, because 1) what are we waiting for and 2) ibid.)

For what it’s worth, I read a few sites that my employer blacklists -- I guess I have to say “nothing awful, just a difference of opinion!” so I will -- anyway, when I clicked the bookmark forgetfully or accidentally, the filter would trip, which I assumed sent off warning bells to IT and managers and all that. After I…

I’m guessing no one here has actually worked for an actual newspaper, so I’m going to try to be patient, but FFS, stringers are a way for newspapers to get news that readers want without taxing the newsroom for otherwise minor stuff. Stringers cover events like school sports, town and city council meetings, and other…

I’ve lived here 21 years and still know: It isn’t pizza if you can’t fold it.
The best pizza I’ve had since moving here is Home Slice, 1415 S. Congress, Austin, a few doors up from the Continental Club.

I suppose whether it would work for refills would probably depend on the kindness of the random pharmacist you’re hoping will help you out, but after I bring refills home every month, I take cell phone photos of the labels with all the necessary information and create an album in Google Photos for that month’s labels. …

Mmmmyup. I’ve had well-wrapped steaks in my fridge for more than two weeks and enjoyed them as much as I would have fresh out of the source. Two tips: Wrap everything you can in good-quality cling wrap and press all air out. And keep your fridge in the 35-degree range, not the 40-degree range. No idea who thought 40…

If Instagram feeds and likes mean anything (please don’t take those from me; they’re all I’ve got left), the photos I’ve taken of bars are some of my best. Interesting labels on bottles (or interesting arrangements of bottles), a vintage detail or some little tchotchke a bartender’s put nearby, even just some little…

This is why it’s stupid to use smartwatches as anything other than a second notifications screen. Feel a buzz, glance down, go back to real life unless it’s something that just has to be dealt with now.

I wish Apple just had one feature: Install the latest versions of everything installed on this Mac from Apple that it’s capable of running well. There are actually sites that bitch to me about my “outdated software,” and I have no way of explaining to these lousy programmers that if my new Macbook Pro isn’t in their…

Well, huh. I have never once expected a food delivery person to come up to my third-floor walkup. I have always said “Be right down” and then gone right down to meet them at the building’s front door. In large part I do this because, if they are going to murder me, they’ll have to do it in front of all my neighbors.…

Oh, and the graphic artist who was hired about the same time and worked next to me was fired after a couple of months because he was running a porn empire from his cubicle. I never quite understood why a designer had a Unix shell on his desktop most of the time.

This goes back more than two decades. I took a job as a technical editor for a prominent statistical software company located in Chicago. My new boss was quite the culture vulture and belonged to many theaters, had many subscription plans, came in at unusual hours. I started during a deathmarch, so training was pretty…

I’d say ham salad was pretty much taken for granted when I was growing up outside Boston in the ’60s and ’70s. Is it really that much of a regional dish? I mean, it was at every sub shop and a frequent option in school cafeterias a good 50+ years ago. I’d even suggest serving it in a sub roll with some nice crunchy…