Finally, the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England explained

 

Like most Americans I struggle with geography and have always had trouble remembering the differences between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and England. This video sorts that all out and also explains the difference between the British Isles and the United Kingdom very nicely. Apparently the full name is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Enjoy.

 

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.
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Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways and City Stickers Scofflaws

So this video is kinda going viral, not the way the cat defending the kid from the dog or Rebecca Black viral, but it’s shown up in enough different places that it is worth noting.

Intelligent solar panels covered with tempered glass replaced a panel at a time if damaged or malfunctioning.

“Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to “paint” the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born.” Source

 

• This somewhat related idea was brought to my attention from Scott Adam’s blog.  His readers’ comments are not kind but here is the company’s crowd funding link.
  • Here are the patent links:Patent 1
  • Patent 2
  • Patent 3
    
• And there is already a site that rebuts the idea.
• The thing is, Empires like the Gas, Oil and even Big Auto might not want to give up their monopoly.  Hat tip to Cracked for this one.
• Speaking of cars, the Office of Chicago City Clerk Susana A. Mendoza is helping move the annual Chicago City Vehicle Sticker Sales Program out of the horse & buggy era and into the 21^st Century by initiating Year-Round Chicago City Vehicle Sticker Sales.
• Speaking of City Stickers, apparently someone has been avoiding buying one for the better part of the last decade.  Chicago Girl posted on Everyblock two and a half years ago that somebody on her block has an out of state license plate and no Chicago City Sticker and has lived here (Ward 45) for three years.  This city is quite clear about paying this fee.

I try to take Everyblock posts with a grain of salt.  A typical post is someone sees something suspicious and asks if anyone has more information.  You can then count on ten people to ask if the OP called the cops.  I guess your choices are call the cops or post to EB, it wouldn’t occur to anyone that someone might do both (even when they emphatically state that they did in their post).  EB will delete your comment if you stray too far from the reservation but otherwise, it’s the Wild West on that forum.

Still this is an interesting one.  What do you do when someone is blatantly not paying the same fees you are required by law to pay?  Yes there are bigger fish to fry and one could say that if someone has found a loop hole to game the system, more power to them.  Except the city always needs money and if they feel they don’t have enough they increase the fees so that the law abiding citizens end up paying more.

chicago girl says that there are two cars on her street that do not have city stickers. According to wiki.answers, there are 814 streets in Chicago.  I’m too lazy to diligently research it for this post so let’s use that number.  .So if we do some easy math, the person who has not been paying their City Sticker fee for 6 years owes the city $85 per year (I know the fee might have been slightly lower six years ago but let’s keep the math easy).  Let’s assume that every block has at least two people gaming the system and not purchasing a city sticker even though they are legal residents of Chicago.

2 X $85 = $170

814 X $170 = $138,380

Would that have been enough to keep a school or two open last year?

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Advice to new graduates: How to survive Corporate America

Welcome Mr and/or Ms College Graduate!

You have finished college and are ready to enter the workforce. You are going to hear a lot of unsolicited advice and clichés like “youth is wasted on the young” and “only 40 years until you can retire” and “keep your nose to the grindstone.” Some of it is good advice and some of it is Lost in the Translation. You don’t know what it really means until you experience the Life-Suck that is Corporate America. What I’m going to tell you hopefully separates the cream from the crap.

My advice is going to focus on Corporate America and not so much on its cousins Academic or Legal America. Those institutions are a little different in terms of infrastructure, governance and culture, but we all face a lot of the same challenges at any job. You’re always gonna have a boss demanding thing of you, or a co-worker who drops the ball on a project or the Office Admin who won’t give you the resources you need.

 

Now let’s assume you’ve already landed that first post-college Real Job. Let’s also assume it’s a typical entry-level job at some typical company where they make something the general public consumes but you work in the Corporate Headquarters so you have no idea how that widget is actually built or what it truly does. This is about 80% of the jobs in Corporate America. Presumably, you are in a field of work that is somewhat in line with whatever you majored in at college. If you are an archaeology major biding your time until a curator croaks at your local museum then you have a bigger problem to solve.

So you’ve probably watched The Office, read or at least heard of Dilbert and watched Office Space enough to recite every line backward in your sleep. Corporate America exactly like that…at times. After all, where do you think Scott Adams, et al got their ideas. There are countless WTF moments in Corporate America. But mostly, Corporate America is boring. It’s a lot of shuffling of paper (electronic and real) that doesn’t amount to anything. And unlike college where you studied for an exam and then moved on to the next course, Corporate America is a lot more like Groundhog Day in that you repeat the same things over and over again. Only the font changes.

The first thing everyone tells you is You have to Pay Your Dues. What does that really F-ing mean?

This conceptualization has been around since the dawn of time. The Classic Icon being someone fetching coffee and picking up dry cleaning. This term comes from the literal phrase for “paying one’s dues” such as union members or other literal memberships were and is now used in the more figurative sense of putting in a lot of time doing nothing important before you get to do anything Significant.

What it really means:

You are going to do a lot of meaningless, mind-numbingly boring, and perhaps even pointless things for a long time. When you’re just out of college, it’s easy to get a big head about what you can do in the workplace. Unfortunately, in Corporate America, everyone does a lot of meaningless, mind-numbingly boring, and perhaps even pointless things for a long time before being given any real responsibility. Some really good resources on paying your dues can be found here and here.

Here’s the thing to always remember. You are not working on Cold Fusion, World Hunger, or the Cure for Cancer. Therefore anything you are working on isn’t important in the grand scheme of things. It is however important to the person who is signing your check. And they don’t want to take the chance on an unknown newbie like you screwing it up because it costs money to fix. If someone has to stop what they are doing to fix your mistake then they aren’t working on what they need to be doing. That’s why in the beginning you are only given tasks that wouldn’t make a big difference if you did botch them up. Just don’t botch them up because otherwise, you’ll never get more substantive work.

You should expect to have to pay your dues. You shouldn’t have to expect to pay those dues until the second coming. If you’re not learning anything or advancing, it’s time to look at yourself and figure out what actually sucks: the job or you. If after a reasonable amount of time — your first review or one year, whichever comes first — you have not been given any “substantive assignments” it’s time to re-evaluate the situation. It’s possible your position is a Sinecure, many entry-level jobs are. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you look it up.

Sinecure –an office or position that requires little or no work and that usually provides an income

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It will allow you to log some time in the workforce and hopefully build your experience and KSAs and bide your time until you figure out what you really want to do when you grow up. Oh, you noticed that term KSA: Knowledge, Skills, and Ability.  All I want to say about KSA is that YOU are responsible for your KSA development. You might get lucky and work for a company that has good in-house training and continuous education initiative take advantage of it.  If your company doesn’t offer this, it is up to you to seek it out on your own time.  Your future depends on it.

Good luck and remember, only 40 years or so until you can retire!

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Like me, you probably dislike all of the ads on this page. They pop up unexpectedly, sometimes cover text, start playing videos and clutter the post itself. We bloggers have no control over any aspect of the ads (content, form, placement, etc). I am sorry that they have taken over our blogs on ChicagoNow and appreciate your continued support.

Dear Future Children: Roseanne Roseannadanna was right, It Always Is Something

Dear future children,

This is Week #19 and you are both the size of a [Note to  Self:  remember to ask mommie what that website says you are this week. Update: she says you are either Heirloom tomatoes or softballs.] It’s been a stressful week for us — your parents — for a variety of reasons. In no particular order:

• Our Cat Maggie has Lymphoma
• My condo tenant wrote me an essay email
• Mommie’s condo is unrented

You may hear us talk about these events when you get older, or other similar events. You may not remember Maggie because she is 14 years old right now and healthy cats typically have a lifespan of 16-20 years. And Maggie has not been healthy in a very long time. So the question many pet owners face is how long do you keep spending money to keep your pet alive versus maintaining a Quality of Life lifestyle?

What is so bad about my tenant sending me an email the word length of the Declaration of Independence? Tenants don’t write to see how you are doing to share good news. When they contact you, it’s usually because something happened or something broke or something happened that broke something.

Our issues with our condos is that at the moment, like many Americans, we are Reluctant Landlords. We don’t want to own two condos and a house especially since we are about to embark on a whole world of expense of raising two kiddos in this world. Not that we begrudge you any expense,  something to remember when you select our retirement home.

The problem is that we cannot sell our condos without bringing a lot of money we do not have to the table, therefore we have to keep renting them until the market improves. And given our luck one of two things will happen: we will own them until they are just about paid off and then they get condemned or we sell them one year before their respective locations gentrify and become the next Lincoln Park (I know we’ve told you to stay out of Lincoln Park at night but back in our day, it was safe, trendy and fun.)

“It’s always something,” — Roseanne Roseannadanna, SNL Character played by Gilda Radner.

With any luck, by the time you are old enough to ignore this post, these conflicts will have been replaced by other problems which will be replaced by other issues. Wash, rinse repeat. That’s kinda how life works. Remember the Gilda Radner exhibit at the Saturday Night Life Museum we visited in NYC? You should know that a lot of SNL cast members got their start in Chicago. Well IT always IS something.

As you get older and deal more with people and the real world, it will  seems like there is always something big on your radar. Maybe when you’re students you’ll stress about finals are coming up. Or once you enter the workforce you will have a deadline at work on some huge project. Or in your personal life you wonder how you’re gonna tell someone that you have to break up. Whatever it is, it sometimes seems like there’s something that is taking up all your attention, energy and resources.

I refer to this as the Crisis Of the Week, or COW for short. It may not be earth shattering or life threatening, but it generally consumes 80% of your attention. It may not even be a week’s length of time. I guess there could be the Crisis of the Day (COD) or it could be longer, like Crisis of the Month (COM). I guess there could even be a Crisis of the Year (COY). Lot’s of possibilities.

Then the thing passes. Finals come and go. The deadline arrives and then ends. The breakup occurs. Maybe things were a disaster or maybe they weren’t as bad as they seemed. Whatever happened, the next thing you know, there’s a new new thing on your radar to replace the thing that passed.

The other thing we want to let you know is that while this week’s COW is sad, stressful and expensive, we are dealing with it together as best we can.  We are very lucky because many more people have it much worse than us.  We will get through this COW and hopefully have some down time before the next one arrives.

Love, your parents,

Icarus and Nightingale

Maggie in her natural habitat — sitting on her Princess Pillows

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PSA: Five things to keep in mind when selling on Craigslist

Recently I was looking for an item on Craigslist and I decided, what better way to share my experience than to tell everyone how to do something better! I’m looking for a specific item and this post will focus on that. however these rules apply for almost anything you are selling on CL except perhaps a small child. Don’t try to sell a small child on Craigslist. That’s what Etsy is for!

1. Do Your Research
2. Snap Good Pictures
3. Provide Accurate, detailed Measurements
4. Check your Spam/Junk Folder
5. Let People Know the item has been sold

Do Your Research
Do 5 minutes of research on your item. I was looking for a Roll Top Desk. A quick search on Craigslist shows that Roll Top Desk yields 100 hits and RollTop Desk had 45 hits. If you were trying to sell one of these, you’d want to go with “Roll Top Desk” even if you are certain it is “RollTop Desk.”

Snap Good Pictures
Snap a good picture, from multiple angles. This might not seem like it applies to everything but some objects need more than one view. since it doesn’t cost you anything to post photos, why not. More importantly, make sure the picture is clean and clear. Not too dark, not too light. You should check your photo from different devices like multiple computer browsers and smart phones/tablets. okay that last one might be overkill.

Provide Accurate, detailed Measurements

Provide measurements especially if it is a piece of furniture.  I cannot stress this enough. People want to know if that desk will fit in a specific corner or against a certain wall. heck even if you are selling a blender telling someone how tall it is will tell them them whether it will fit under their cabinet counter. Why not wait until someone asks? well you might get several people asking you which means you have to reply to each one individually. Also it helps weed out people who aren’t able to use your item.

Check your Spam/Junk Folder

CL has automated the method for contacting people and you might think you are not getting any responses.  It could be that the auto-generated email went directly into your Junk Folder next to the Nigeria Prince Bank message and the ad for Viagra and Cialis.

Let People Know the item has been sold

Let people know you sold the item…within reason. If you get a ton of emails you don’t have to respond to each one. but if you get a couple and you sell the item, it’s good karma to let people know that the item is no longer available.  Also, take down the ad even though Craigslist eventually does it for you.

Do have the heart to cut the back of this for computer cables?

Incidentally I did find a Roll Top Desk that was suitable for our needs for $80 chair included. Since we are having children, my office is being converted into a nursery and the computers need to come downstairs.  It was solid enough that I feel like I got a nice antique but in bad enough shape (and cheap enough) that I won’t feel too bad when I  cut small holes in it for computer cables, or if we find something even more awesome and antique-ee later down the road.

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Some cool things are coming to WiFi

While I’m not a WiFi guru or expert, I do know enough to be dangerous. We live in a 100 year old house with most of the walls being plaster so WiFi signals don’t necessarily go everywhere.  So I’m always on the lookout for WiFi tips, tricks and new technologies.  And I thought I’d share a few with you.

• Is it really that hard to figure out where to put your WiFi Extender?
• This router goes to eleven! Actually, it comes with external antennas which help deliver high performance wireless speeds of up to 300 Mbps.
• Comcast cannot figure out old school cable but it going to try its hand at creating 8 million WiFi hotspots.
• Very creative and funny written piece here: “The good news: Routers are a lot more sophisticated than ever before. The bad news: The decision about what router to get next is now more complicated.”

 

Apple Airport

We have a Zoom 5350 Cable Modem/Router in the attic which provides enough internet for email and web surfing provided we are either in the bedroom or not too far from the attic. I’ve been working on various configurations to try and extend the range and the strength of our broadband connection.

Here’s what I have to take it to the next level:

• NETGEAR FVS318 ProSafe VPN Firewall 8 with 8-Port 10/100 Switch
• Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender
• NETGEAR Powerline 200Mbps Nano Adapter – Starter Kit (XAVB2101)
• NETGEAR XWNB5201 Powerline 500Mbps to N300 Wi-Fi Access Point
• Apple Airport Express

 

all my wifi extenders, repeaters and access points

I have to recommend the NETGEAR XWNB5201 Powerline, not only does it bring the Internet down from the attic to the basement, it actually increased our download speeds!
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My Almost Free Grill thanks to Sears and ChicagoNow

So I bought this Kenmore 4-burner LP Red Gas Grill w/searing burner and side burner at Sears. The regular price was $399.99 but of course they had one of their perpetual sales and the item was $100 off.

Here are pictures of me putting the damn thing together.

[placegallery]

How The Grill was Almost Free

I had a eCoupon for $35 off a purchase of $300. The first snag is that $299.99 is not $300 and the online system isn’t programmed to let me slide on that. So I opted to purchase the 2 yr protection plan and a grill cover. I normally do not do extended warranties or protection agreements because they are usually throwing money away but Sears is awesome when it comes to tool replacement and I suspect that if anything is wrong with the grill in the first two years, the underpaid works at the exchange center will basically give me a new grill.

eCoupon Discount
$35.00

I think also used some Shop Your Way Rewards points that i have accumulated over the years through purchases from Sears and K-mart. And that my friends who have my cell # have also used because someone should get the credit right?

Additional Discount
$16.60

Because of my SYWR Membership I got free shipping on the grill cover and a discount on that as well. The cover was $31.99 but i got it for $24 because of my SYWR Membership and that’s about what it would cost me to buy it just about anywhere else.

I used $150 in gift cards. This included a $50 card my mom gave me at Christmas and gift cards I ordered by converting credit card points.

Gift Card Discount
$150.00

That leave $98.39 for the grill itself. Luckily, I won the ChicagoNow Best Gallery Contest a few months ago and that came with a $100 Amazon gift card. Now I couldn’t actually apply it here but with a little creative accounting and robbing from Peter to pay Paul, effectively I had an extra hundred bucks to work with.

I still had to pay tax and of course the service plan and cover bumped me up but over all it was a good deal.

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Rosetta Stone: Learning a new language is not easy for adults

In 2009 I purchased the Rosetta Stone software in an attempt to learn Polish, the language of my ancestors. I’ll tell you this much, it is probably easier to learn Nuclear Physics, Quantum Mechanics or host a dinner party with carnivores, vegetarians, a vegan, and a lactose intolerant pescatarian than to train my adult brain to command my tongue to speak one of the hardest languages on the planet.

I bought all three levels figuring I might as well go all in especially since they had a guarantee that if you don’t learn the language after 6 months you can return it. My plan was to spend an hour an evening pushing through the exercises. Unfortunately, it was also summer, I just met Nightingale and let’s just say I didn’t use the program much. I could have been a D-Bag and asked for my money back, but the problem was my lack of effort and I owned that. So the Rosetta Stone has sat pretty dormant though I fire it up from time to time. In fact this year as a pseudo New Year’s Resolution I made a concerted effort to practice at least one hour a week during my work from home day. I got off to a good start but alas, I missed most of March and all of April.

[placegallery]

In case you don’t know, Rosetta Stone never uses your native language. It only uses pictures and words in the language you are trying to learn.

First, the learner gets a few nouns: a man, a woman, an apple, an egg. You hear the word, see the word written and see the picture at the same time. Soon you start practicing them: you see the picture of the apple and have to click on one of four words, only one of which is jabłko, apple. Or you’ll see and hear Jajko, and have to pick which of the four pictures has an egg in it.

I mentioned apple and egg, Jajko i jabłko. That’s right!  Right out of the gate the first thing Rosetta Stone throws at you are two words in Polish that are spelled and sound very similar, at least to American eyes and ears.

Soon, you move to pairs: a boy and a girl, a man and a boy, a man and a car. Then basic verbs: the man eats. The boy eats. The women eats.

Gradually, things get more complex: the girl drinks juice, the girl drinks water, the man reads a newspaper. All of this builds block by block. The learner is solving the language like a puzzle. Only one new element appears at a time. If you see, in Polish, the man is reading a [unfamiliar word], you will have already learned “The man is reading…” and the picture will make clear that the new word is “book”. Then you get to the book is [unfamiliar word] the chair, with the book on the chair. So the new word is on.

In theory, you should never struggle too hard to figure out what’s going on. In reality, well let’s just say there are some challenges of not having an instructor to guide you.

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Happy Birthday to me and Happy 100th Post on ChicagoNow

So today is my 45th Birthday and this is my 100th* post on ChicagoNow. When I started blogging on ChicagoNow, my wife Nightingale and I were in the process of seeking a larger, more family-friendly abode. So I was blogging about that. Then we found a house and I tried writing “in delay” about those experiences but it just was easier to go rogue and write about whatever strikes my fancy: Technology, Chicago Bears, Do It Yourself projects, Life in Corporate America, whatever. All with the blessing of the ChicagoNow Management.

“Another thing that became a habit after that year – When something funny, sad, silly, stupid, happy or ridiculous happens, don’t just stand there, write that blog post in your head. And then write it for real when you get home. Everything is blog material, once you start paying attention.” Fern Roney

ChicagoNow is kinda like Hogwarts for Bloggers. Before CN, many of us had personal blogs on Blogger, Typepad or even WordPress where we practiced our wizardry writing craft without really knowing what the hell we were doing. CN has given us a chance to hone our magic skills and flex our writing muscles while providing positive feedback, best practice advice and lots and lots of support. Many ChicagoNow bloggers have either abandoned or virtually ignored their previous blogs in lieu of the ChicagoNow ecosystem because Blogging is a lot of work. I still post on my personal blog when I have something to say that doesn’t fit in here or when I want to flesh something out first before bringing it here. I guess that’s the engineer in me, doing something in Beta before bringing it to Production.

It’s so hard to find good free photos that I am exploiting my future children

Blogging is a lot of work. I know I already said that, but it is so true.  Most of us are like SAHP, we don’t earn a salary but the rewards are immeasurable. Another difference between our private blogs and CN is that there is a slightly elevated formality that hopefully prompts you to up your writing game.

I’m not saying every post is gonna be the works of Shakespeare, Hemingway or Some_Other_Author you respect, I’m just posing that you definitely want to bring your best. For one thing, the ChicagoNow ecosystem has its own audience comprised mostly of twentysomethings who are reading your stuff on their phones while riding the El, hoping avoiding contact with other humans as long as possible (unless they are extremely TotsMeGoats, as the kiddies say).

To that end, you have post, like, share, tweet, rinse and repeat. It helps to collaborate with others in the blogging community if they are willing. You will wonder why they don’t like your page back when you like theirs. Sometimes it’s their security settings and you don’t see it. Other times, people suck, bloggers are people, and ergo ipso factor yolo!

Promoting your blog is almost if not more work than writing posts. Technically you don’t have to promote your blog and you certainly control the level of effort you put into it. However, I feel since CN gave me a platform from which to post, the least I can do is attempt to bringing pageviews so that the Mothership Tribune Corp doesn’t kick us to the curb.  [So please subscribe, share & like the fuck out of my blog!  Seriously, I’m asking for a like, not a kidney.]

And that brings about another important point. While the blog is ours, the platform belongs to someone else and it can be taken away at any time for any reason. On Superbowl Sunday, for instance, two of my blogger siblings duked it out using their blogs as the backdrop for their personal rivalry and paid the ultimate price: banishment from the ChicagoNow Universe.

Milestones and Small Victories

Here at ChicagoNow we have friendly contests each month for best post and gallery, and I’ve won each one once. I’ve also made it into the top 20 visited blogs a few times. And a couple of posts have been placed on the front page of the Chicago Tribune’s online edition. I think I’ve even had the trifecta of making the Top 20, being the Community Manager Pick and being on the Tribune Front Page on the same day. Or maybe I imagined that. While it definitely is bragworthy and certainly means you’re doing something right, you should also act like you’ve been there before.  Besides, I’m happier when a reader simply  comments, or shares our post or likes our page or re-tweets or subscribes.  So please do that!

Things don’t always go as planned

*Confession: while I’m calling this my 100th post, it’s really number 102, not counting a post or two I deleted. The reason: I have some news to share and thought it would be cool if I timed it with my 100th post and posted on May 1. That didn’t happen for a variety of reasons which I’ll file under Life Gets in the Way.  I started drafting this post weeks ago as a “advice to new CN bloggers” onboarding post.  Instead, I’m using this post to share some personal news:  my wife and I are expecting Twins in October…or late September as I’ve learned from all the mommy bloggers here that twins come early.

As of right now I don’t plan to become a Daddy Blogger although I will most likely write posts about that.  My hope, like a lot of bloggers, is to someday write a best selling book or three. However, it’s more important that I be a Decent Dad instead of a Famous Father. So for now I will just blog whenever I can about whatever I have something to say all the while exercising and toning my writing muscles.

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Will the Rapid ever return to Rapid Transit on CTA

One of the many complaints about riding the CTA train lines is that it takes too long to get from Point A to Point B. The El is too “loop-centric”, making travel between different non-loop areas slow and time consuming. This is not a new issue, there have been stories and suggestions for years about how to fix public transportation in Chicago. Basically everyone talks about the CTA but no one ever does anything about it. Here are some older articles with some recommendations and suggestions that range from moderate to extremely ambitious.

 

• The Reader came up with this El Fix that would have piggybacked on the Red and Purple Modernization project in 2011. Not sure anything ever came of it, but any piece that uses Sachem in a sentence has to be good.
• Gaper’s Block tackled another complaint in 2011: The subway/El track layout only services a disproportionate portion of the city, leaving the rest underserved or wholly unserved.
• Transit Future The campaign includes projects such as bus rapid transit routes and expanding the Red Line’s South Branch. And Maybe. Finally. Getting the Yellow Line to reach Old Orchard Mall — don’t hold you’re breath they’ve been toting that idea since Christ was a Kid.
• RedEye reports the CTA announced that it plans to create a bypass north of the Belmont station to speed North Side Brown, Red and Purple Line train travel through that area.

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