It’s no surprise that I am a personal fan of BlackVue and their car dashcams. From their familiar black tubular design to the well structured mobile app, BlackVue offers an insurance-like product that protects you when you need it most. Living in Southeastern Wisconsin, we’ve seen an increase in car thefts and break-ins lately, especially around the downtown area. These “Kia Boys” have no respect for you or your personal property, but these break-ins are often happening while people are away from their car. A car’s battery isn’t designed to sustain accessory equipment running for continuous use after the driver…
Author: Justin Vendette
In the United States, according to the CDC, 430 people die to accidental Carbon Monoxide poisoning every year and a staggering 50,000 people are hospitalized each year due to exposure. It’s important to be prepared regardless if you live in a house or an apartment structure with a professional fire alarm. CO2 can and is deadly if not properly detected. Don’t let an invisible and (sometimes) scentless gas harm you and your family. X-Sense is here to showcase their new XC04-WX WiFi Carbon Monoxide detector and how it can make a positive difference in a critical situation. Don’t trust that…
There are plenty of times when a homeowner, home mechanic, or general handy-man needs to source a welder. Whether it’s to fix a broken metal plate or to help join two materials together, welding at home is often a rarity and some resort to asking their Facebook friends if anyone knows a professional welder. With the vase marketplace of Amazon, owning your own personal welder is now something easily accessible and something that anyone could quickly learn at home. Today, Vevor is showcasing their new MIG Welder with 200 amps. This big blue box is capable of three different welding…
In an uncertain economic time, a lot of people are looking at ways to save money and some even are looking at second sources of income. A common and easy way to create a side hustle is to get involved with using your own skill set right at home that others may lack. Perhaps you have a crafty mind and want to make jewelry to sell or create stylized clothing designs. Websites such as Etsy are a great place to get started on selling personalized goods at a decent price and create that welcomed second source of income. Vevor, a…
Ever want to see where everything disappears to after flushing a toilet? Me neither, but there are many professions that need to investigate such pipes and locations. Clogged, damaged, and collapsed pipes inside a home or office can be devastating to fix. Given that pipes are often underground, knowing the cause of damage to them can be vital is a successful repair. Pool pluming, gutters, water lines, and even toilet sewer drains are all common failure points at some point in time and we often have to give people a call to take a look to fix these sorts of…
Amazon accounts for over 50% of all e-commerce in the United States [source] and with that comes a whole lot of deliveries. During COVID, world shopping quickly went “online”. We can have food, other groceries, and everything else under the sun delivered directly to our doors nowadays, but that means someone has to bring it to us. Even if Amazon does eventually nail down their drone delivery service, long-haul truck drivers and delivery drivers will still be a needed workforce in this apparent digital online ordering world. With more delivery drivers on the road, companies and normal drivers may want…
My house is full of smart home automated tech that would make someone from ten years ago be stunned at what I can do from just a phone in my pocket. As great as the plethora of home tech can be, it does come with countless headaches, issues, and IT troubleshooting. Sometimes basic and simple really can be better. With new homes coming with a front primary door and a rear entry door, it can be helpful to have a doorbell installed to a door that isn’t the front door and spending tons of money for a wired video doorbell…
X-Sense 3-Pack SC07-W Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm Overview It was only a few years ago when I moved into my first apartment and then eight months later need to move out due to my above neighbor catching their garage on fire. Luckily, I wasn’t home at the time, but the smoke and damage from the fire caused great valuable losses. If only their garage had a smoke detector to alert them of a raging fire, then most of the damage may have been suppressed by a fire extinguisher. Fires in homes are devastating and carbon monoxide can be deadly;…
When migrating a MDS model from one database (or server) to another, the MDS Deployment Tool may report that the input mask is not valid. Input Masks in MDS represent the data-type of each field; think of a cell datatype in Excel. Each Input Mask is represented in the SQL database under the [tblList] table. This lists the available Input Masks available to users in MDS. To my knowledge, the only way to add Input Masks is to insert them into this table. During the migration of an MDS model using the Deploy Tool, the tool will attempt to check…
Remove DevOps Server or TFS On-Prem User Locks In the situation where a user no longer works at the company or a file has a phantom lock on a DevOps Server/TFS repository, administrators may undo the lock on the repository or file in question. This guide was created for DevOps Server 2019, but should continue to work on older Team Foundation Server installs. 1. Install Microsoft Visual Studio from the Official Download Page. Visual Studio 2019 was used in this situation. 2. Install the matching copy of Team Explorer for the previously downloaded Visual Studio client. 3. With both tools…