Ozzie the Old Guy's Wisdom Bank

This concept is a no-brainer, really. If you treat others the way you would like to be treated, they will return the favour in spades. So it starts with being friendly, and it goes from there. I'm writing this story finally for my favourite all-time cab driver, Charlie (his real name; he wanted it that way). He kept asking, "Where is my mention in a story?" so here it is, and it's about more than just him. Charlie and I hit it off immediately, which doesn't happen that often with a cab driver, in my experience. Much of it is that we both had a lot in common: wisdom from advanced age, a love of talking to make the ride more pleasurable, a love of learning, and the ability to talk about just about anything. (I'm sure Charlie will tell me what I missed and what needs correction or modification, and that works for me because I can always improve, making the world a better place) But let's go back to the importance of influencing excellent customer service and ...

The truth is that it is a task that, for the vast majority of musicians, is much the same as it is for ice hockey and football players. A tiny few will ever make it big or even break even. So you learn to play your instrument (voice is an instrument, too) and find ways to stretch a dollar, however you might squeeze it out of the people who keep trying to find cheaper musicians. All they get that way is garage bands with better equipment. So let me introduce you to Michael Bonnel, the one-man craftsman who operates as Vintage Tonewheel Restorations in London, Ontario, Canada. Read what is behind this link to get the full story of how he runs his business of musical instrument repair.  Mike found a way to finally make some sustainable money as a musician, and this is repairing vintage gear of all types from the classic Hammond B3 (that is a Hammond A100, the home version of the B3, so Mike informed me), all manner of electronic keyboards, amplifiers and the list goes on and on and o...

First off, I can see a bunch of people saying, "Why so long?" I arrived 45 minutes early for the scheduled appointment, but my financial advisor did not start until noon. I first asked if they had a washroom I could use. A teller took me back to the room for the keys to the employee washroom, and then I sat down and watched the customer flow. (Well yeah, after I did my business and washed my hands and took a seat in the huge reception area.) A steady stream of folks being handled by pleasant tellers on a Thursday morning. Lots of smiles, courtesy and friendly chat on both sides of the counter. It started off better than expected and made me feel good about leaving two other bank chains that didn't have people in the bank to deal with you face-to-face. I'm opening a business account with RBC due to the soon-to-be-former bank's unfriendly approach to doing so, as they didn't offer that service at the branch. Instead, you had to book a telephone interview at thei...

This is an interim card I designed this morning for a new business I just started (the first one), and there is a lot more purpose here than meets the eye. First, I ordered 50 cards for about $14 CDN, as the email address is interim until the website is active. Of course, the website is not listed since it will be part of the new email address (Oz@ozzietheoldguy.ca), as the products will only be shipped in Canada. It's too early to gather the stuff to ship elsewhere for now and avoid the added expense. (The next one is another interim card and just 10 days after the first. Explanation will follow at the bottom of this post)  Functional Design It begins with what is most important: the company name, followed by the preferred method of contact. There is a very good reason not to include the phone number. This is a graphic-based business, and a picture is worth a thousand words in this case. Imagine trying to explain this over the phone, never mind accents, phone reception, lack of fo...

So, I would think you would get past the graphic that I'm not very fond of; a lot of folks in a lot of professions since they couldn't care less about us and only want what they really didn't earn, and that is our money. (The poster there was my first real attempt at using Canva, and it turned out pretty good, I must say.) So the story here is about getting rid of the latest hack trying to annoy us with false claims that our computers have a problem and to click on stuff like "SCAN NOW" or other stupid claims. AI wasn't much help, actually, because all the ideas they suggested didn't work simply because the hackers found workarounds. My solution was to sign off in Task Manager and restart my Windows session, which only worked for a bit before the junk showed up again. And then I checked the hidden icon on your taskbar, which is just this character (<) pointing upwards. There it was, the little devil looking so innocent as Pulse Browser, so I chose exit ...

Today I walked into the London store, first visited the soft goods store (clothing), then the main hard goods store, and did not get a chance to go to the goalie room. I was blown away by all the choices in the stores. I posted this in the Google Maps review on the store. "For me, an old guy who worked for Cooper Sporting Goods back in the day, this place was just golden, and I didn't even go into the goalie building. I met two really great young guys I call Dee Marley and Noah Knows, and we shared our hockey knowledge across two completely different eras of the game. Me: 1975 era, them: 2026, and we all couldn't get enough of each other's stories. The store is just as amazing as the staff. They truly know their stuff." I held a $409 CCM stick in my hand and was just blown away by how light it was, and Noah says players today say they are too light and want a heavier, stiffer-shafted stick. I shared with them that, back when I started playing hockey, the Toronto M...