Uses

My digital toolbox — the stuff that's survived real-world use. What started with a $50 Raspberry Pi in 2015 has evolved into a homelab and workflow that actually works for me. Living document. I update it when I change something significant.

The physical layer

Hardware

Desktop PC 2019 · self-built: Intel i9-9900K, 64 GB RAM, RTX 3090, 1TB NVMe + 8TB HDD. The 24GB VRAM handles 7B–34B LLMs comfortably. Killed a 2080 Ti overclocking for inference in 2020 — taught me to respect thermal limits.
Framework Laptop 2022 · DIY Edition: i7-1260P, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. After three laptops became e-waste because one component failed, the modular design won me over. More expensive than a Dell with similar specs — I value the right-to-repair philosophy.
LG 34WK95U 34″ ultrawide · 3440×1440: One seamless ultrawide beats dual 27″ monitors. Three vertical code panes side-by-side, no bezel gap. Game changer for monitoring dashboards.
Wooting 80HE keyboard · ~$185: Analog hall-effect keys. Thought it was marketing hype until I tried it. Per-key actuation points and analog input changed how I interact with my machine. Can't go back to mechanical.
Glorious Model O mouse · ~$50: 67 grams. After years of heavy gaming mice and wrist pain, going ultralight was a revelation.
SteelSeries Arctis 7X+ headset · ~$150: Wireless that actually works. 30+ hour battery, comfortable for all-day wear, and the mic doesn't sound like I'm in a cave.
Chemex 10-cup + Baratza Encore coffee · $50 + $170: Good security engineering requires good coffee. Non-negotiable. The ritual of manual pour-over gives me time to think through problems.

The server rack

Homelab

Ubiquiti UDM Pro firewall · ~$380: Spent years with pfSense on repurposed hardware. UDM Pro isn't as flexible, but it's stable, fast, and I don't maintain another box. VLAN segmentation, IDS/IPS, DPI. Handles gigabit without breaking a sweat.
Dell PowerEdge R910 2017 · ~$800 used: Main hypervisor. 4× Xeon E7540 (48 threads), 256 GB RAM, ~400 GB ZFS pool. Runs Incus on Ubuntu 24.04 with BOSH-managed Cloud Foundry and Concourse CI. Sounds like a jet engine at full throttle. ~$150/month at idle — cheaper than equivalent cloud.
Raspberry Pi 5 ×3 · $80 each: Dual Pi-hole for DNS, Authentik for SSO, assorted auxiliary services. The ARM tax is real but power draw is negligible.
Raspberry Pi 4 2015 · the OG: The one that started it all. Still running after ten years. Handles Chrony NTP for the lab. Won't retire it out of principle.

The editor

Software & Development

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS daily driver: Tried Fedora for six months, kept breaking after updates. Ubuntu LTS is boring, which is exactly what I want on machines I depend on.
Incus virtualization: Fork of LXD after Canonical's licensing changes. Cleaner virtualization than ESXi for a homelab, less overhead than KVM alone.
Neovim editor: Switched from VSCode in 2023 after getting fed up with Electron memory usage. Lua config, LSP integration, terminal-native. Steep curve, worth it.
Astro static site framework: What this site is built with. Islands architecture, zero JS by default, excellent Markdown and MDX support. The sweet spot between Jekyll and Next.js.
Git + GitHub version control: Everything lives in git. Dotfiles, homelab configs, blog posts, scripts. If it's not in git, it might as well not exist.
Terraform infrastructure as code: Managed firewall rules as code. Best investment I made in automation. Turned "click 20 things in Ubiquiti's UI" into a reviewable pull request.

The perimeter

Security & Monitoring

Wazuh SIEM · self-hosted: Self-hosted SIEM for the homelab. Open source, integrates with CISA KEV and AlienVault OTX threat feeds. Detects real things, not just noise.
Bitwarden password manager · self-hosted: Self-hosted via Vaultwarden. Integrated with YubiKey for 2FA. If a service doesn't support 2FA, it doesn't get my data.
YubiKey 5C NFC hardware token · $55: Hardware-backed 2FA for everything that supports it. Two keys — one on my keychain, one in a safe as backup.
Pi-hole DNS filter · ×2 for HA: Network-wide ad and tracker blocking. Blocks ~40,000 malicious or privacy-invasive domains. Caught a smart bulb trying to phone home 47,000 times in one day.
Prometheus + Grafana + Loki observability stack: Metrics, dashboards, and log aggregation. Alertmanager pushes to ntfy for mobile notifications.

The assistants

AI & Coding Tools

Claude Code daily driver: Primary AI coding assistant. Strong at architecture, long-context reasoning, and multi-file refactors. Most of my AI-assisted work runs through this.
Codex / Gemini / OpenCode multi-model: Different models for different tasks — routed via Nexus Agents. Gemini for research, Codex for deep code analysis, OpenCode for privacy-sensitive work.
Ollama local LLM runner: Runs Llama, Qwen, and Mistral models locally on the 3090. Privacy-sensitive work never leaves my machine.
GitHub Copilot inline autocomplete: Inline completion in Neovim. Good for boilerplate, comments, and small refactors. Never trust it with business logic.

The subscriptions

Services

GitHub ~$4/mo · Pro: Where my code lives. Pro tier for private repos and Actions minutes. This site auto-deploys from GitHub Pages.
Cloudflare free tier: DNS, DDoS protection, edge caching. Free tier covers everything I need for personal projects.
Backblaze B2 ~$50/mo · off-site backup: Off-site backup for homelab. 3-2-1 strategy. Cheaper than S3, fast enough for nightly restores when needed.
SimpleLogin ~$3/mo: Email aliases for every service signup. When a company gets breached, I know who leaked my address. Compartmentalization reduces blast radius.

Running on my metal

Self-Hosted

Vaultwarden Bitwarden-compatible: Rust rewrite of Bitwarden server. Lighter than the official container, same clients, same features I actually use.
Authentik SSO / identity provider: Self-hosted SSO for homelab services. OIDC, SAML, LDAP. Integrates with everything that speaks standard identity protocols.
BookStack wiki · documentation: Homelab wiki. Procedures, runbooks, and "why did I configure this like that" notes. Future-me always thanks past-me for writing things down.
ntfy push notifications: Self-hosted push notification service. Alertmanager, cron jobs, and scripts all send alerts through it.

The shell

CLI Tools

Zsh + Starship shell + prompt: Modern shell, fast prompt. Starship is written in Rust and stays out of my way. Git status, exit codes, runtime indicators at a glance.
ripgrep (rg) replaces grep: Faster than grep, respects .gitignore by default, sensible defaults. I've genuinely forgotten how to use plain grep.
fd replaces find: Faster than find, friendlier syntax, respects .gitignore. The find command's argument order has haunted me for years.
bat replaces cat: Syntax-highlighted cat with line numbers. Looks better piped into less or used directly. Small quality-of-life win.
eza replaces ls: Modern ls with git integration and tree view. The successor to exa.
zoxide replaces cd: Directory jumper that learns your habits. z proj to jump to your most-used "proj*" directory. Saves hundreds of keystrokes a day.
fzf fuzzy finder: Fuzzy finder for everything — files, command history, git branches, process lists. Ctrl-R will never feel the same again.
tmux terminal multiplexer: Sessions survive SSH disconnects, split panes for parallel work, shared sessions for pair debugging. Can't work without it.
htop + btop + ncdu system monitoring: htop for process monitoring, btop when I want the pretty view, ncdu when I need to find what's eating my disk.

Last updated April 2026.