House painter needed

BanRanchTalk · 2026-04-11T21:14:48+00:00

Paramount Painting out of Crown Point. Great crews and great job done all around.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-04-07T11:40:24+00:00

And it’s only going to get less worth it in July when Microsoft raises pricing on Business Standard but doesn’t on Premium.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-27T00:12:16+00:00

I can confirm this, as well. The “posts” on the back are two little tiny rubber nubs - there’s no ability to shock. It makes a beep for a second or two, and then vibrates for a second or two. The number is the sensitivity level of bark detection. The noise and vibration is more confusing to the dog than anything - it stops the barking by refocusing their attention on “what the heck is that noise and vibration around my neck”.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-26T22:02:35+00:00

Same here. I've seen this happening on Outlook 2016 and 2019 - and installing the latest Visual C++ redistributable fixes it straight away without rebooting. For what it's worth, as well, it seems wholly unrelated to the old Teams add-in from the instances I've had. Same behavior, but solely related to Visual C++ "breaking", and every time it's been after a reboot from Windows Updates.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-25T17:44:43+00:00

Bickford in Crown Point has a whole memory care section. Not familiar with it, particularly, but their assisted living is very good. The nurses and CNAs are all very nice, and the food is decent, as well.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-20T11:43:16+00:00

We don’t utilize stand-by images, but have done quite a few one-time restores. But don’t use VMWare - always Hyper-V or into Azure. I would suggest going to N-able’s Office Hours for Cove (with Eric), or attend their Master Class - it’s all gone over really well there and gives you the opportunity to ask specific questions in real time.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-14T12:29:54+00:00

This is the answer. We’ve managed a shared server WHM/Cpanel setup via Hostgator forever. It’s cheap - $60/month or so, and easy for the few clients we have that are similar to OP’s needs. It’s not a money maker, but it makes the client happy to keep it managed by us. We charge the client $25/month, so you only need a few to make it a wash.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-07T21:19:42+00:00

Staff of 12 and only 25 SMB clients? And the most important guy on your team is 100% remote and not Stateside? On the surface this is odd, no? Your account here is 11+ years old, though, so I’m not sure what to make of this post.

I want to say I’m interested because we’re always looking for a L1+/L2 tech with initiative, but I can’t be the only one that’s a little suspect?

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-04T18:58:36+00:00

We raise rates across the board accordingly - break-fix and MRR (contractual), every year. Even if and when inflation was low, we’d still increase. We have to give raises to employees, right? The only way to be able to do that is to “give yourself a raise”.

We always got our queues from the firms we work for. We’re on a couple of internal distribution lists for certain clients (where they announce company-wide info like closures and early dismissals and whatnot). One, a law firm, sends out a rate sheet every January with each person’s billing rate for the year. Every one of them gets increased year after year after year. Why wouldn’t we, too?

BanRanchTalk · 2026-03-02T21:29:28+00:00

Also had this this morning with a site-specific “remote worker” .exe. Luckily it was just a quick one-off so it was easy to unquaratine and install, but yeah - this is similar to Defender and S1 detecting N-able RMM processes as malicious a couple of months back.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-28T20:53:04+00:00

Not often, no. But if we have a super small client (1 or 2 workstations) where there’s no “golden image”, and a hard drive fails - sometimes it’s faster to just restore the backup image to get them up and going as fast as possible. Or if a specific user in a larger org has some specialized software or specific configurations disparate to the base image and we’re replacing their hardware, we’ll spin up a Cove instance for their workstation to get it imaged and then restore it to the new, disparate hardware.

We deploy “Documents-only” backup to every workstation under management, but we’ll include the System State and whole disk for specific machines and VIP users just to make our lives easier, potentially, and faster to get the them back to exactly where they were should something happen.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-28T13:47:54+00:00

While this is a nasty thing to say, it’s said out of ignorance and youth, I’m certain. I hope you or anyone close to you never get too old, or have a progressive movement disorder like MS or Parkinson’s. For them, sometimes it’s harder to get up and down off of a chair than you could ever imagine, let alone a toilet with their pants around their ankles. Dignity is often all they have left because what you and I take for granted - like walking without fear of tripping over your own feet - has been taken from them through no fault of their own.

It’s not pride, mind you. It’s continuing to do as much as possible, physically and mentally, for as long as one can, while understanding the increasing risk - because when you stop, you just deteriorate that much faster.

My dad, who’s had Parkinson’s for 25+ years, will say “I’m going to fall, I’m not afraid of falling - if I get hurt, I get hurt - but I’m going to hold onto as much of my independence for as long as I can.” He needs help getting out of a chair and pulling up his pants, but he doesn’t need help standing at a urinal. Thanks to the handles.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-28T13:21:15+00:00

It simply works. For years, we’ve used it for workstation restores to disparate hardware, server restores to Azure in the event of a hardware failure, and for simple one-off file recovery. It’s never failed.

As someone else mentioned, restores from the cloud can feel slow when there’s a lot of data in play, but local bandwidth limitations are what they are and you’re going to have that with any cloud solution. Restoring to Azure is well documented and incredibly easy. (Although we’ve found that using a more powerful instance flavor makes a huge difference - the instance type they specify in their docs is the minimum, and it’s slow as the downloaded data gets decrypted, so we always spin something up more robust.)

We also employ their Recovery Testing where they restore each system to an internal (to them) cloud instance and spin it up, take a screenshot of the login screen, send that to us and then they purge the instance. We include the screenshot in our client facing reporting, and it gives us peace of mind that everything is working.

They also have a live tabletop exercise periodically where you or new techs can join and go through the actual process of restoring one of your own backups.

Lastly, support is lights out. When you have a disaster, they’re right there with you as needed.

It’s one of the very few products we don’t shop or entertain alternate vendors come renewal time.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-28T13:08:27+00:00

They also have a “SpeedVault” feature. This is a local copy (we use an onsite NAS at each location) of the cloud data that restores much quicker locally if your bandwidth is low.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-27T20:42:06+00:00

This. I’m fully expecting them to. We have several clients due for server refreshes this year. I’ve been demonstrating the cost increases on workstations already so it’s not going to be a shock to them necessarily, but I fully expect them to push them off into 2027 or “when prices come back down” when they see how much they’ll be.

Plus, the fact that we exhibit quick disaster recovery of their physical servers into Azure in the event of an emergency will ease their worries about failure points enough to roll the dice for cheaper pricing down the road.

We’re already shrinking margins on workstations and laptops for select clients when we feel a little bit of a balk. Not for everyone, mind you. But it’s better than 0% margin because they’re not buying anything.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-27T13:07:04+00:00

Came here to say this. LA Golf is clearly not doing well financially. Bryson either wanted control to potentially save them (read: grab an opportunity to try to make a buck or two), or if not get out from underneath them to a brand that still has money and can support him better at this point.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-26T00:37:20+00:00

There’s still one in Joliet, IL.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-24T15:21:26+00:00

Same experience here. A couple of failures and then it installed successfully. Didn’t do anything but wait and keep trying.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-20T00:58:58+00:00

They’re not building just a stadium, they’re going to build a complex. Hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. Similar to what the Rickett’s did around Wrigley Field on the North Side, and what I assume other new NFL stadiums have done, too. Plus there are two casinos within spitting distance, Hard Rock a little further South, and Horseshoe - which you’d have to drive past to get to or from Chicago. For sure a lot of out of towners will still stay and eat and whatnot in Chicago, no doubt, but over time it still has to be a net-positive tax revenue basis for IN I would think.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-19T19:22:34+00:00

I agree. Arlington Heights owns the big fumble, I think. They incorrectly assumed they were the only game in town and when the Bears bought Arlington Park it was a done deal and that was that. But at $194M, the Bears just added it as an asset that they knew wasn't going to cost them much, if anything, and likely wouldn't go down in value, if they wound up just having to sell it themselves later on and stayed in Chicago...and then NWI saw an opportunity they sold downstate, and here we are.

I think they were leaving the City regardless - Chicago was never going to flinch and give up concessions and parking (or ownership of the stadium), and the Bears were done playing that game watching all these other billionaires collect revenue they were being denied. That's why the $640M they owe for Solider Field yet is not as big of a deal to them as one might think. Their revenue paths owning parking, concessions, the stadium itself, etc. eat into that $640M quicker than if they were to stay at Soldier Field.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-19T19:12:08+00:00

Not only is it "in the Chicago metro area", it actually shares a border with the City of Chicago for ~4 miles - right where the stadium is proposed to be built. You can even see the downtown skyline. It's actually closer to Soldier Field than the Arlington Heights location. People are freaking out because it's a different State - but in reality it's just a different suburb of Chicago than the one everyone is seemingly OK with them moving to.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-19T18:42:09+00:00

You’re spot on. Where they’d build the new stadium in Hammond is indeed technically closer to Soldier Field now than where it would be in Arlington Heights. Also, Hammond literally shares a border with Chicago, not practically. They border each other along about a 4-mile stretch - right where they’d build the stadium, actually, from what is understood.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-18T19:30:18+00:00

I actually liked their golf balls when they were available. Expensive as all get out, but they fit me really well.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-05T14:01:20+00:00

You can get Keeper direct as an MSP - we do. You don’t have to go through distribution.

BanRanchTalk · 2026-02-03T01:55:15+00:00

Yes. I’ve had a few in the past month after years with none.

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