What home improvement work did you do today?

We've setup rules. Your 1st device is Apple Watch. They each got one in 6th grade. You don't get a mobile phone until 8th grade. Your plans are with T-Mobile and have child safety features (on content) in-place on your plan, which you can't remove.

You'll have access to MacBook and a PC. Both have BitDefender on them for malware and content protection. The Apple product is setup with Apple Family, with time and content restrictions for everything, exceptions in place for certain creative tools, and the same restrictions extend to your phone. The PC is setup with Microsoft Family with similar restrictions. Both will let you request time extensions to our phones immediately if you're working on something important. Anyone caught tampering with controls will lose access to that device (that's been tested, and they FA&FO'd)

Internet in the house is filtered through Pi-hole to block ads, adware, malware, with DNS pointed at QUAD9 for security. All kids devices, game consoles, and SmartTVs have internet blocked from 9:30pm to 7:30am, controlled through our internet gateway (UniFi), along with some other fun stuff. All devices must be turned into your mom & dad's room by 9:30, 10:00 at the latest.

Even then, there's cracks I've had to patch, workarounds they've found. And I can't even imagine what this is like for someone who hasn't spent the last 25+ years in the technology world, where a major focus of your job was on physical and cybersecurity, and you're responsible for thousands of users on a daily basis.

EDIT: And the gaming consoles are locked down for time too. We're total buzzkills.

 

This mirrors almost exactly what I do, minus pihole and Bitdefender (wife doesn't compute; son has a PC). I do allow son more latitude as he's almost 17 and I figure if he's mature enough to hold down a job 3 months away from home, he's mature enough to have some of his restrictions relaxed.

 

Totally!

BitDefender: I needed something lightweight after AVG went to shit, and then Avira went to shit. I've got a professional contact that I trust implicitly, same entity I was getting my Avira licenses from, and he recommended giving BitDefender a try. That was almost a decade ago.

It's lightweight, the console is cloud-based so I can setup machine policies and rollout installs from there, and monitor/alerting from there also. Licenses are cheap enough if purchased at 3 year intervals (it's typically by 2 get 1 free). I usually buy 10 licenses for my parents and MIL, the kids, and myself. It supports MacOS and Windows, so no device compatibility for my needs.

It's nice because not only has it managed to block 100% of Trojan/virus protection on every machine I've had it on, but it's blocked 99% of adware/malware (or better, but a couple of times a questionable PUP or two got in, so I'm dinging 1%). If anything major happens on any machine, like with the parents, or if they hit a phishing/targeted scam, I get an alert and can TeamViewer into their computer to check out what's going on. but so far, no major emergencies.

Highly recommend if it's something you need.

 

Follow up on the daughter’s wedding Photo Booth project. Almost complete. Have some touch ups, labels and some signage to do, but mostly together and finished. Curtains are all done too, just not installed.

 

your kids are gonna have to go find oldschool magazine smut.

 

+1 for bitdefender.

Been using it for years. Normally Windows Defender gets the job done, but i wanted something additional.

Usually you can get a 15 device 2yr "family plan" for around $35-40. Nice thing also is that you can stack them, so for around/under $80 you get 4 years for 15 devices.

Please, for the love of god and all things holy, dont use norton.

 

Really nice work there man, that turned out great!

 

Thanks man. Better than I thought it would honestly

 

Concrete poured to connect the shop to the driveway. Kids were home, so they were excited to watch some of it.

 

Yeah, I'm only paying more for the Enterprise because it gives full GravityZone portal access and lots of remote management options. It's a little more aligned with business than personal. Given how I purchased and who it was thru tainted my abilities a bit, but I quickly recognized the value in the Enterprise version.

 

Getting closer….



A little peak behind the curtain…

iPad, printer and dimmable led lighting panel controls.

 

Question for here. B/c I've been waiting too long to do this, but need to be thoughtful about execution, because some of the spots I need to do this in are 25ft up off the ground, on an incline, making it a bit tougher to be cutting shit off, and tougher to do alone.

Has anyone seen a product that will stand off your siding for cases like this, where some lazy ass installing siding decided to cut sloppy ass square holes for a round pancake box?

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I know I can use a Multimax or similar to cut out a square in the hardy plank, and throw a hardyboard or PVC block in place like this pic ... but surely, someone makes a product to deal with this situation? I'm coming up empty. I've got two exterior lights and four flood light fixtures with shoddy work like this I need to correct. I definitely wouldn't do what you see here, it's a wood insert, and lack of a drip edge up top would likely have it rotting in no time.

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