Everyone Needs a Hobby

Hobbies are important. They provide a way to channel energy and creativity into something for ourselves. For me, I’ve always enjoyed computers, starting with the Apple IIe computer lab at my elementary school. My first non-restaurant job was at a computer store, and I’ve been building my own computers ever since I had some disposable income!

Lately I found myself gravitating towards programming simple apps and the online classes I’ve been taking were all talking about deploying with Docker. This was a completely new technology to me and as I started to dig into it I realized how transformative it was. I found that a lot of the software I was already using could be deployed with Docker containers, and quickly realized that might be the easiest way start learning about it.

And once I became familiar with Docker apps, I started noticing them everywhere. My poor workstation started to get bloated, so I had to build a server so I could move everything over to it and free up resources on the workstation. One of my MBA classes (Managing Network Infrastructure) gave me a ton of ideas on how to manage my home network but my cheap router couldn’t accommodate, so I got a cheap OPNsense box. I started playing around with LDAP and SSO.

In short, I had started a homelab.

I eventually discovered r/selfhosted and r/homelab and realized I was in great company! I found lots of great ideas there to put on my list, and found many answers to issues I was trying to resolve.

Finally, I realized that I had answers to questions others were asking. I had been meaning to document everything when I finished up, but I know now that I’m never going to be finished. There’s always one more container to load, one more hardware tweak, one more computer to upgrade. So instead of one finished product, I’m going to document the journey, complete with trails abandoned, briar patches avoided or crashed through, and trail markers found or created. Hopefully you’ll find this as entertaining to read as it has been (and is!) to live through.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!