Shoeless Joseph’s favourite customer interaction of the week. “So why do you do it?” the Chinese cobbler’s customer asked of me. “A couple of reasons,” I began, as usual when asked about my barefoot existence. “Firstly, it’s a protest against our relentless exploitation of the labour of people who live under tyranny for the sake of our consumer benefit. You know, like in his home country,” I said, pointing to

Gratitude Journal After watching a YouTube video this Sunday past, I have decided to start keeping a weekly gratitude journal at work. I am grateful for the local sausage vendor who came into my shop a short time ago. He wanted to soup up his son’s gaming rig, and this week all the parts came in. We doubled the RAM, stuck in an M.2 SSD and slapped in a 6GB

Been thinking of ways to bring in more customers.  My shop is located in a very busy plaza.  So I thought I’d go old-school and get a sign for out front the door. I got in touch with the ladies over at the Sign Art Centre on Stevenson street.  They were able to whip me up a great sign with my company name, colours, and an empty space for customization.

I’ve stepped away from the blogging for a while.  In part, because of a tumultuous period in my home life, but also because I just wasn’t finding what I was writing to be very interesting. So I’ve decided to take a different approach.  Instead of laying out the basics of jobs I’ve done, I figured I’d talk about something every computer shop has:  Repair horror stories. I have been fixing

Competition for tech repair in Guelph is fierce.  The work flow of late has been slow, and the days long and fruitless.  Thankfully an old regular brought in a job to break up the monotony, and a rather involved one at that. A few of the keys on the keyboard of his MacBook Air A1466 have been less than fully responsive, which is an annoying thing in a keyboard.  Cleaning

On this beautiful, sun-shiney spring day a kind-eyed lady came in with an unusual request. “I make honey,” she informed me.  “Well, I guess technically the bees make the honey.  Anyway, I need a small fan that I can put into a honey box I made from an old meat smoking box that I have at home.  Someone told me a computer fan would be perfect.  Do you have any?”

My Afghani buddy Noor has a grandchild who was a little rough with their cheap little Samsung Galaxy Tab A Android tablet when trying to plug it in to charge. The result?  A badly buggered USB port, which renders the device useless. “Can you fix?” he asked me one night during one of our regular Afghani dinner parties. “I can try,” I answered. “How much?” “Usually $90,” I told him. 

Had to pop into downtown to do some business stuff this morning, so I decided to pop in on the good folks over at Wyndham Arts Supplies to pick up some useful little tools. Thankfully someone popped in with this solid little Dell laptop with a dilapidated hard disk drive.  No important data. Essentially a task in computer repair 101 – replace a hard drive and install an operating system.

The hardest part about being in independent computer repair is that the entire industry is geared against your success. A recent right-to-repair bill, introduced by one of the few remaining provincial Liberal MPs, was voted down recently. This goes against the entire premise behind my business.  If you do not have a right to repair your computers and smartphones, how can you get into Do-It-Yourself repairs? People often spend hundreds

Nothing much to say about today. A dear old customer came in a bought a long USB-C cable. Only $5. She’d bought one a few weeks ago for a friend. “It was a big hit!” She informed me. “And it’s a great deal.  I’ll take another!” It’s always nice to see a familiar face with simple needs. Makes the workday so much better, even when there’s not much else going