Welcome - Sweet Mercy, a Blog?

I have spent years, decades really, architecting, engineering, building, razing, deploying, decommissioning technology stacks and software at the enterprise datacenter/cloud scale as well as for my own uses: a rack in a closet, a stack of containers, a DNS server the whole house quietly depends on, and a backup routine I trust slightly less than I would like. You see, I've had the pleasure of operating in both leadership capacity as well as a direct executor in the various spaces in which I've worked - Wall St., Main St., Defense/Intel, Federal/Civilian, Big Tech, and more ...

The Homelab Files is where I thought I might start to capture much of the lessons learned, relationships made, and various takeaways and share them. There is no shortage of amazing content creators online, but I am hoping that The Homelab Files does something a bit different.

I'm hopeful much of the content will be worth watching to you. An automation or build, a debrief on an architecture and why, conversations with industry peers - those are easier to show than to describe. Those become content on our YouTube Channel.

Some things just read better. An editorial or an opinion piece on some recent news or event, a follow-up to a discussion, a whitepaper that I, or perhaps with a colleague, may be working on or have produced, etc. Video can be a poor container for such material. You cannot skim it, you cannot copy a line out of it, and you cannot search it eighteen months later with ease (although AI is indeed changing this). So the written side goes here.

This gives the project three places to live. Videos on YouTube, where you need to watch a thing happen or enjoy a long-form conversation. Code, scripts and similar assets on GitHub (which does require a Membership to access). Lastly, this blog for the material that does not fit either: written posts that never needed a video, and companion notes for the videos that did, and more.

This journey is always subject to change, but for now everything on the blog is public. There is no paywall, no gated section, no members-only tier. If it is worth writing, it is worth reading without a login. That isn't to say there won't be premium content that requires revenue to support it in the future, but we'll cross that bridge if we need to.

What To Expect

The blog carries the written side. Some posts will stand alone. Others will follow a video and cover what the video could not: the part cut for time, the approach that failed and the reason it failed. When a post follows a video it will link to it, and any associated code lives on GitHub.

Who This Is For

Frankly anyone interested! That said, it is likely to be quite technical in its content at times, so some level of understanding is expected. For example, if I'm referencing Docker containers, I'm not going to author much text about what they are ... I'm likely to go right into the strategic and tactical elements of what I'm trying to convey, or show how I execute.

What I will do is take feedback seriously and make an honest effort to adopt some compromise as needed for the audience, which is likely to shape how things are posted, albeit more so on GitHub than this blog.

How This Will Go

This is early. This is the first post (arguably pre-launch) and there is no backlog to read through.

Going forward, I would rather publish something that took a week to get right than keep a schedule for its own sake. If that means two posts this month and none the next because work moves to video production, so be it. The alternative is padded posts that waste your time and mine, and I have read enough of those for a lifetime.

I will also correct things. If a post turns out to be wrong, or a step stops working because the project changed underneath it, I would rather update the post and say so at the bottom than leave a broken recipe sitting here looking authoritative.

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On Carlin and Soft Language (Warning)

George warned of the sterilization of the American language:

I'm a kid born and bred of the streets of Brooklyn & Queens, New York. Rough-and-tumble neighborhoods steeped in ethnicity, flair, and phrases or word choices that would make the non-New Yorker take notice or blush. There was no "Soft Language" growing up. People spoke plainly, directly, and largely without high-societal moderation. If you are sensitive to this sort of language, this is a destination you might want to skip. I'll try to tag posts with "RANT" when they contain such flair, but you've been warned. This is truly a free-speech venue for myself and any collaborators that wind up contributing.

The Important Part

Enjoy the videos, the blog posts, the GitHub repo, and our shared journey! ...but more importantly enjoy life. Step away from the keyboard more often. Play Frisbee with your dog, take your kid out for a malted. Hug your husband or wife and take them out for lunch. I fell in love with these devices decades ago ... and if I've learned anything it is that stepping away from them from time to time has allowed me to continue loving them.