Closing Early

We have closed early today because of the weather. We hope you have a beautiful day and we will see you tomorrow !

Getting Political Spam Texts?

Hi! We have had quite a few people either calling or popping in asking how to stop getting spam messages for political candidates. They should have  away for you to unsubscribe or stop but if you go that route and they don't stop, you can block the number. We also recommend reporting the spam texts to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). You can do this by forwarding the text to 7726 (SPAM) or by visiting fcc.gov. The FCC has also compiled a list of what you can do to stop spam calls. We will include a couple of links to FCC web pages that can help you with this. As always you are also welcome to pop in or give us a call, we are happy to help!

FCC Guide to Stopping Unwanted Calls/Texts:
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-unwanted-robocalls-and-texts

FCC Guide to Call Blocking
https://www.fcc.gov/call-blocking

Summer Hours

Hello. We are going to be switching to summer hours starting April 6th, and will be closing at 1 on Saturdays. Tuesday thru Friday we are going to be keeping the same hours, 8am to 6pm.
Thank you!

Does Your Password Need All That Stuff?

Because people want your stuff, and it is really easy to take it unless you make it hard. Do you want to know the most common password out there? 123456. Followed swiftly by 123456789, qwerty, password, and to round out the top 5 most common passwords 12345. Please don't use these, they are the first ones that thieves try. 

In this beautiful digital age, they have programs written and easily available to crack passwords. These programs do what is called a brute force attack. They just run through every possible combination of letters, numbers, and characters until they get it right. Which is why every website wants you to make it long and ugly. The longer and uglier it is, the longer it is going to take for someone to crack it. For example, 062116jh takes about 4 minutes, my-fair-lady takes about 3 hours. Make it my-fair-lady* thats about a week. my-fair-lady*1 now it's a little over a year, about 13 months. It would take them 25,947 years to get to my-fair-lady*198. If you really wanted to tick them off go for something like my-fair-lady-@4598 because that will take about 116,477,121 years. By that time you should have had to change your password at least as many times. I recommend changing passwords every 6 months, just to be extra safe, but once a year works just fine.

How are you supposed to keep track of all these passwords with all these requirements? The way I recommend the most is to find a password keeper app. I like Keeper. Pros: It will hold all of your passwords. It is password protected, if whoever is trying to get in tries too many times then it will delete all the information stored in the app. This is true for many password storage apps. They also have family plans. Cons: it does require a paid subscription, however they do have a free 30 day trial so you can test it out and see if it will work for you.

Sources:

https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/most-common-passwords/

Android Phones: the Cool Stuff, presentation by Administrative Freedom LLC

https://www.keepersecurity.com/ 

Home Building & Remodeling Expo!

If you or someone you know are looking to remodel or build a home, we have been given free tickets to the Home Building & Remodeling Expo January 19th - 21st next year. Feel free to drop in to say hi and pick up as many tickets as you would like! You can also check out minneapolishbrexpo.com for more details.

Holiday hours

We will be closed December 23rd and 26th for the holiday weekend. We will reopen on the 27th at our usual time.

It's Gift Giving Season!

Giving (or getting!) a new computer for the holidays? Make sure everything is good to go by bringing it in and letting us get you anti-virus, the latest updates, and anything else that you may need! 
Or if your looking for a computer to gift (or get) we have those too! They come with the complete PC Bits suite of recommended programs and our full tune up! We also have refurbished Android phones and tablets! 

We look forward to seeing you and wish you a happy holiday season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello! We are going to be closed on Thanksgiving but we will be opening on Friday at 8 as usual. We hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

New Owners!

Hello! We have had some folks wondering where Dean is recently, and we just wanted to make sure everyone is informed that Dean has retired! The new owners are Edward (Ed) and Samantha (Sam). We are happy to help and while we may update or change somethings around we are still proud to provide top notch service to our customers. You are welcome at anytime to pop in and say hello. We look forward to working with you going forward. Thank you and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

We are open on Saturday

We will be open on Saturday, November 18th. We apologize for the miscommunication, the issue was resolved. Thank you!

We are open on Saturday

We will be open on Saturday, November 18th. We apologize for the miscommunication, the issue was resolved. Thank you!

We're Back!

We are open today for our normal hours. Thank you again for your understanding.