Writing

In 2024 I set up a home server around a refurbished Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro. The machine cost about $140; the SSD it came with had bad sectors, so I replaced it for roughly $35. I already had a Synology NAS with two 4 TB drives in RAID for my photo storage and backups, and a UPS to ride through the short power interruptions common where I live. I wanted more control over my files, media, passwords, and reading list. Docker made getting those services running straightforward. Deciding how much of my daily life should depend on that machine was the harder engineering question. ...

This is a personal note about my setup in September 2024, not a description of my current engineering work. I had used Linux for more than six years before moving to a MacBook Pro for its build quality and Unix environment. My first was a base-model 2019 13-inch MacBook Pro with an i5. I also built a Ryzen 9 PC with an AMD GPU and kept the same Arch installation running on it for more than two years. ...