Now

Last updated: 2026-09-22

The homelab is mostly where I wanted it. What’s left is one layer up: keeping the work coordinated across the things I care about, and removing the last few places where a machine still waits for me to press the button.

Current State

• The foundation holds: Terraform provisions, Ansible configures, and most of the lab runs without me thinking about it
• The gap that’s left is deployment: when I push a change or an image gets a new version, it still waits for me to notice
• Splitting my time on purpose: helpdesk hours and cloud engineering hours are not the same headspace, and pretending otherwise costs me both
• Cutting external dependencies where I can. My phone lost most of its Google services this year and I have not missed them

Current Projects

Backbar is a self-hosted place to plan and work together across the domains I usually keep apart: projects, people, finance, infrastructure, and the decisions that connect them. The point is not another dashboard; it’s having one honest view instead of five half-remembered ones, and something other people can actually work in with me.

Next to that, closing the deployment gap: getting updates to roll out on their own when I push a change or when an upstream image moves, instead of me SSH’ing in to do it by hand.

openrabbit and GuardDen have been retired. Not everything needs to stay alive to have been worth building.

Ideas (brewing)

• A clean, understandable, calm infrastructure setup
• Small tools that solve real problems without becoming complex
• Expanding hiddenden.cafe into something more alive and personal

Learning Right Now

• Azure, at work and at home, where it is the same platform seen from two very different angles
• Security and privacy as a practice rather than a preference
• Delivery patterns I trust enough to let run unattended

Focus Areas

• Privacy-first self-hosting with minimal external dependencies
• Keeping helpdesk and engineering clearly separated, in time and in attention
• Building things that stay understandable and maintainable
• Sustainable progress: small steps instead of burnout cycles

Outside of Tech

Letting things settle, rebuilding balance, and figuring out direction again without rushing it.

I am also trying to reconnect with people, and to meet new ones. I miss just hanging out with friends more than I expected to. It depends on whether the social battery is there on the day, and some days it simply is not, but the wanting to is back.