I went down to AutoZone yesterday for some wiper fluid and bumped into my nephew Dave. He was staring at the replacement bulbs looking like he’d lost his best friend. Turns out his auto insurance...
My neighbor Dottie knocked on my door Tuesday holding her phone out like she'd just caught something in a jar. "Did you know MapQuest is back?" she said. I told her MapQuest never left, it just g...
My neighbor Carol came over last week with a folder of invoices she needed to scan. She has one of those HP multifunction printers — the kind that sits on a desk and costs about the same as a dec...
I saw a list circulating today of supposedly ridiculous startup pitches. Renting out your forehead to carry solar panels. Robot mosquitoes collecting blood donations. People were chuckling in the...
I was looking at Instagram yesterday—mostly hoping to see if my cousin’s tomato seedlings had survived the late frost—when a sponsored post cornered me about something called PersonaGen.The fello...
Arthur bought one of those "smart" vacuums last month. You know the ones that look like overpriced dinner plates scuttling around the baseboards. I told him we didn't need it. We have a perfectly...
Arthur shoved his phone in my face while I was drinking my coffee this morning. He was watching a video of some guy who is very, very upset that his artificial intelligence chat thing keeps forge...
Wife Approval Factor.Apparently, in the online circles where people spend entire Saturdays wiring circuit boards into their drywall, this is a recognized technical metric. Right alongside ping ra...
I heard a segment on NPR this morning that made my eyes cross.Amazon is trying to get their drone delivery service into 500 cities by the end of the year. They want to drop five-pound packages in...
Gary across the street has a new hobby. Naturally.Last Tuesday I walked over to return his hedge trimmers, and he practically dragged me into his entryway by my sleeve to inspect his wall. Well, ...
The clerk at the hardware store, pale as skim milk and maybe nineteen, sighed like a Victorian orphan yesterday while ringing up my picture wire. He set his glowing glass slab down on the counter...
Hi, I'm Brenda. My stand mixer is from 1987. It's beige, it sounds like a leaf blower, and in almost forty years it has never asked me to accept updated terms before I make cookie dough.So I'm st...
My neighbor Carol still writes “$4 FIRM” in thick black Magic Marker on masking tape and slaps it across the lid of an old electric skillet. It works. The skillet leaves her driveway; four crumpl...
I was sipping my morning peppermint tea when I came across a Business Insider report that made me grip the edge of my kitchen table.According to the report, people are paying $11,500 for a smart ...
My neighbor Arthur knocked on my kitchen door yesterday morning holding a carton of half-and-half like it was an unexploded mortar shell. His refrigerator had begun chiming a chirpy electronic wa...
Marge from down the block brought over a plastic tub of lemon bars this morning, still warm, with powdered sugar dusting her cardigan. She immediately started raving about the future. Specificall...
