“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man”
~Elbert Hubbard (author)
New Starlink Internet “dishie”
I heard a great podcast this week, discussing how a new generation doesn’t LIVE to WORK….it reminded me of the times I felt that way.
When I first started in this business, 1984, my goal was to move in with my Dad (Bruce) and go to the University of Sask. He had set aside funds for my education, and when I moved to Saskatchewan to live with him – he gave me the money! I promptly turned around and traded my motorcycle and used the funds to get a WAY bigger motorcycle. Deciding at that moment “I will take a year off school and just work for Dad in the Dental Supply Warehouse” and replace the money by the fall and start school….
The problem became that I REALLY LOVED what I was doing! It was cool to work for a family business, and my Dad taught me inventory systems, book keeping, management, finances. I was happy to head to the warehouse to dust shelves and put away product, build a dental unit from scratch, repair a broken Vacudent dental unit, grab a belt for an SS White belt driven handpiece and hop on my motorcycle to old Dr. Fielding office.
What great memories when Dr Fielding would call!
“Dominion Supply, this is Warren, how can I help you today?”
“Fielding here. Need you to come fix my handpiece again. You got a belt in stock there?”
“Yup – I’ll be right over!”
“Cuspidor is leaking too, bring a wrench…”
Whenever these tasks started to feel like “work”, I would go on a mission to turn my world upside down and try something else! I wanted to know the mechanics of the equipment – so I ripped apart dental units, and sourced parts locally (using pneumatic Clippard Valves) to build my own dental unit at the shop. I used an architectural drawing board to learn to design dental offices, and there are about a dozen offices in the province that I personally designed. That wasn’t enough and for a while Wayne Sakowsky and myself decided to contract building offices.
Computers were “becoming a thing” and with my Dad we guided a local programming company to help us write an inventory management system. I bought my first home computer so I could actually start publishing dental flyers (using Coral “Publisher” – later to become WordPerfect). Technology became my newest thing!
These are all great memories – but the point being….it never felt like “work”.
As long as I was continuing to challenge myself to learn new things – this was just life. Being able to contribute something useful, learn from so many people, and continue to break the boundaries of how business “used to be done”…..
How about you? How do you keep yourself from “Living to work?”
The first “blogs” I used to read were all self serving “informercials” about why you needed to pick a certain guy to by your “consultant”. So many of these former dentists would promote the idea that the way they did things was the best and only way, and I saw so many bad examples of consultants getting paid fees and then completely destroying the morale of an office and F***g everything up! Causing staff to quit. Dentists to be miserable…and beyond miserable unfortunately! Going quite insane.
Healthco and Denco had “programs” that would teach an office to create money machines. Everyone who drank the koolaid usually had small success and eventually failed. Very similar to the good intentions you have when you start working out with a goal in mind – MAYBE you actually accomplish the goal, but often the lifestyle isn’t enjoyable or sustainable. Pizza tastes too good, and you are too sore to work out today…..
I wanted to write a blog that wasn’t all about why you need to “work with Warren” – I wanted to create a “lifestyle” blog. Identify the problems in a daily dental practice, and offer some solutions. Hook you up with actual experts – accountants, lawyers, bankers….
It wasn’t readily available when I started out, and much of the specialty stuff I just dove in to learn myself. Again, keeping it all interesting!
Another goal was to make sure to talk about just every day life stuff….which is why I am writing this one today.
I wanted to tell my friends about a few cool things that might benefit your life!
Every one of these short descriptions will have a link to the company website in case you are interested! The only benefit to the author is that we can blab to each other about how much we love it!
Apple fit+
Will try to keep this short and sweet! Here are a few things that are really cool that you might enjoy – feel free to write to me if you have any questions!
Apple Watch – Did you know that over 100 MILLION people now have an apple watch! Everyone uses theirs for different purposes. Health Tracking is a major new category that I think will continue to make these types of devices valuable!
In order to make the most of my Apple devices, I have now SUBSCRIBED to “Apple One” which bundles together “all the best” of apple! About $35 a month gets you this…
-Apple Music (iTunes) which allows you to create custom music stations, listen to radio from all over the world, download any song and create playlists and so much more
-Apple TV – VERY underrated! Apple spent $1 BILLION initially, and is now budgeting $6 BILLION to create new content… If you haven’t had a chance to check out Apple TV – you are missing out on some very high quality, well produced, interesting TV series and movies! We are currently watching “For All Mankind” which is an interesting take on the history of the space program, and a twisted story with plenty of drama. Can’t wait for the second season of “The Morning Show” with Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell – incredible!
-Apple Fit – My latest “addiction” is to one of several expert trainers through a series of workouts. Treadmill, Bike, Yoga, Dance, HIIT, Core, Strength. From beginner to hard core. Various times – you choose the work out of your choice and your watch will track you. The latest is “Walk with…” which gets loaded directly to your watch. Pop in your AirPods and hit play and walk along with celebrities for an interesting 30-40 minute walk while you listen!
-Apple News+- Apple News Plus is like a magazine subscription to Netflix. You not only get up to date news from credible sources, Apple Plus will feed you articles from hundreds of magazines! Since I follow investing a lot – I get access to Forbes, Bloomberg – but I also like guitars and golf and consumer reports – and Apple allows me to access those in my news feed! Apple News Plus feeds me the stories that are interesting to me! Wall Street Journal, CBC, CTV – you name it – and access to a HUGE number of magazines that I used to buy. All included!
-Apple Arcade – I used to be a bit of a gamer, and I haven’t even tried this. No time left in the day! The cool thing is the “apple one” subscription can be shared with the family so Karen and Sarah both use some of these features that I may not use (how is that for good value!)
-iCloud – One of those things that just runs in the background and you don’t think about. Owning the Apple One subscription gives our family a plan that backs up to TWO TERRABYTES of data! With all the video and pictures we all take, we need that!
STARLINK
We currently live about half ways to Pike Lake – RM of Vanscoy (Saskatchewan). What that means is we have one bar of service for our mobile phones, and REALLY EXPENSIVE AND SHITTY internet! In the 9 years we have lived here, we have struggled to make a better connections. We traded out Satellite Internet called Xplorenet which only worked about 50% of the time for Sasktel Fusion. Sasktel was 90% “ok” with delivering at least some form of internet – but we often had zero connection of internet so poor that an email wouldn’t even send properly.
Since I often work from home, I had to rely on Schein to provide me a Bell mobility connection. The data was limited to 5GB per month – which was basically enough to do a couple ZOOM calls and I would start to have issues. Issues being – Henry Schein sending me warnings about using too much data! One of the IT guys at Schein actually suggested Starlink and at that time (a few months ago) it wasn’t available.
It recently became available, and I ordered! It was $800 to buy the dish and hardware (which I am told costs the company about $3200 to build). It took about a month to arrive, and within 5 minutes I had it set up on my front lawn and was testing – WOW!! On a Friday afternoon I set up the dish and on Saturday I was cancelling the Sasktel Fusion. There is NO COMPARASIN of the quality of internet.
We went from download average 3-4Mbps to 180Mbps, upload speeds of 1.2Mbps to 20Mbps. You could tell immediately it was working because I didn’t have to wait when I wanted to load a page – it was immediate!
In the week or so since we have had this, I have watched a few hours of other Starlink user experiences – because I can do that now! More important, the long term reviews are 4.5 Star, the only issues which we do experience is a little bit of glitch. Sometimes you have to reload a page, or wait a few seconds.
Pretty damn good for Beta….Will Musk rule the world and soon space as well?
Egret Lab Canada
Egret Lab Canada latest promo video – click to watch
It took me several years of researching to believe you could actually make an effective disinfectant, sanitizer and deodorizer from just salt and water. Seriously? After reading HUNDREDS of Scientific's, the only hurdle was the machines that generated the safe for human beings and nature product were THOUSANDS of dollars and were HUGE! My venture with Dr. Perry Kurz started by looking at a way to eliminate the BIOFILM in your dental unit water lines with Hypochorous Acid Machine installed in your mechanical room. They work, and they work well!
Instead of spending $300 per operatory per year for tablets, solutions and filters – you could simply install this device in your mechanical room and no longer worry about biofilm! It’s proven, and it works….you will see this in the next few years – and it will come from a highly reputable equipment manufacturer (I know this because I was trying to secure the rights and it already belongs to another company!)
In the meantime, we came across the Egret device – which had the Scientific backing we were after. It could eliminate Germs, Virus, bacteria (and we even had a study for covid performed by Swedish National recognized lab SVA). This was amazing!
The bottom line is – it works! The offices that are using this (mostly for reception, operatory chairs only, high level cleaning, bathrooms, lunch rooms) may also be fogging as an enhanced procedure (there are studies that show how effective HOCl is using as a fogging product). It’s actually quite simple to use and we have created an “IDEA BOOK” to show the HUNDREDS of everyday uses.
Eliminating harsh chemicals, providing a product that can clean as well or better than many household cleaners, is safe to the environment (breaks back down to salt and water) and saves tons of plastic waste. All for about 1 penny of salt per liter! Crazy, eh!
20% off right now – use “SPRINGSALE” in the checkout!
SONOS
We purchased our first Sonos speaker several years ago. The idea being I would slowly add on and create a “showhome” feel. Being able to throw on a little jazz background music when the family came over on the weekends for family supper. Cranking up the Classic Rock for the weekend cleaning. Relaxing and listening to an interesting Sirius satellite Radio show on demand. Streaming Apple Music out to the deck, garage and backyard while working in the garden.
You get it?
Sonos is SO EASY to set up and the sound quality is second to none! For about $250 you can buy a Sonos One with Alexa built in – and just “tell Alexa” to start playing your favourite song – BOOM, you are dancing! The best part of SONOS is being able to add on as budget allows. We started with a Sonos 5 in the living room, and slowly added several more models so we now have surround sound Television, we use “the MOVE” speaker to follow us to the garden – but if we get up, I also have Sonos in the garage and on the front deck installed under the eaves to keep them out of the weather.
It’s an amazing experience to have music playing in every room of your house – and being able to add as you go…..
BLINK
Blink Home Security – home and business for CHEAP!
Jamie was using home security services Vivent – and they were driving her nuts! Not only did she have to sign a crazy contract, they came and installed devices at a really high price. When she wanted to add a camera, and they quoted her….she had enough. It rarely worked the way she wanted, and she wanted something simpler!
She asked me what we were using.
“Blink” from Amazon!
I needed to find a decent security system for our second home, without all the expense. A way to monitor people coming and going while we were not there! A way to know if my garage door was open – or someone was coming to the door to check if we were home so they could break in!
For about $200 I was able to buy a system that included a couple of cameras with the base system. The BONUS was I could easily ADD ON more cameras as we went along.
The Biggest advantage – and reason I am telling you about this today – is the simplicity of setting it all up! These cameras range from $30 - $100 and the mid tier models simply take 2 “AA” batteries which only need to be replaced about once every 2 years! You can easily check in any time you want and there is a plethora of settings so you can avoid the pet activations, and the tree branch blowing false alarma. The latest cameras are as low as $35 (but you have to plug them in) and the all feature TWO WAY talking!
Won’t your favourite burglar be surprised to find out that you can watch them while the burgle your home, but that this is all caught “in the cloud” so you can share this on social media and make them very popular! They will be known to everyone which is the kind of famous most of these bad guys don’t want.
We now have about 12 cameras between two homes – in the garages, in the basement, in the office….imagine being able to check the front door of your office while you are out for lunch – now you know you have to get back there….
I promised Karen we could get out of the house and get to Costco today – so I am leaving this blog even though I had several more “COOL” things to tell you about! Here are two more things you might find handy…
Harmony remote control – This is the remote control for the couch potato. You can even control the temperature of your home, change lighting conditions, set the mood for a movie, or actually turn on and off the entertainment center. I LOVE this remote!
Alexa and Siri – I have automated a good portion of our home, a little at a time. Mostly using Alexa devices – even the Sonos speakers we now have feature voice control. When we go to bed – I just say “alexa, bedtime” which changes the lighting conditions and temperature and locks our home. It’s truly simple to set up the devices. I have also integrated this using my SIRI so I can do the same thing by talking to SIRI and have created geo-zones. When I get home the door unlocks, the lights turn on, the temperature rises
“Alexa – turn on the television” is the language of love…..
Apple Car Play – This isn’t so much a device as a necessity of life for me. Being able to chat using car play allows me to “work” while I drive without being distracted. I am also able to control the entrertainment, podcasts, What’s app conversations, and more. The only PITA I had was having to plug in my phone and unplug it every time. I have burned out several cables and finally decided to “go wireless” – if you want to be able to use your Apple Car Play without having to plug in – check out this device CPlay2Air
What devices do you use that you would recommend? I LOVE this stuff!