Computer and technology related topics
So, you are getting Gigabit Internet, and you need a faster router? Here are your best firewall/router options. With all the ISPs starting to roll out fiber many folks have asked which Firewall or Router to get for Gigabit Internet. Instead of answering the same question over and over, I made this post to link … Read more
On being focused I’ve been too scattered on tasks and projects and ongoing commitments. In 2020 I overcommitted (actually, in 2019, I overcommitted, which affected me in 2020) and found myself doing too many things and none of them well and not doing important things I needed to do but had no time for. By … Read more
Have you heard about WireGuard? I was looking at OpenVPN and other VPN options recently and came across WireGuard. WireGuard is built into the Linux kernel and is now available for just about every platform: Windows, Mac, FreeBSD, Android, iOS. I would just run WireGuard in a VM but if you wanted to it can … Read more
My friend Dave told me about a service called VidAngel. I had forgotten all about it. But with the recent death of Sean Connery, I remembered one of my favorite movies was the Hunt for Red October. So I thought we’d watch it for our family movie night. When you haven’t seen a movie in … Read more
I found a project called StorJ. With it, you can “be the cloud” by renting out your spare NAS or hard drive storage. The consumer side is Tardigrade which allows people to store their data. It seems to be targeted at people looking for a decentralized version of Amazon AWS S3. About Tardigrade A few … Read more
My Proxmox server was at 85% capacity. The daily email from Proxmox reminded me of two drives throwing SMART errors. It was time to replace the array. I like to think hard drives can last 5-years so it’s best to proactively replace drives around that age before the failure rate starts to increase. I ask … Read more
We finally got fiber pulled under the railroad tracks. Josh from Ting dropped by this morning and lit it up! Now we have symmetrical gigabit Internet. It is 970/980 on Josh’s computer, but the speeds come in around 730/845 for me due to the old age of my computer equipment, but I can survive. My … Read more
Netdata – The Hidden Gem of System Monitoring Netdata is now my favorite system monitoring tool. It is not widely known. But it’s rapidly gaining popularity. Traditional system monitoring (Nagios, Zabbix, etc.) done right requires quite a bit of work. For smaller networks it’s almost overkill. It involves setting up a central network monitoring server, … Read more
The Problem with Surveillance On several occasions, someone has engaged me in a conversation about software to monitor remote employees. If you have to install surveillance software, you’re doing management wrong. This article in the Washington Post describes precisely what you should not do. Monitoring employees in this manner is an invasion of privacy; it’s … Read more
What’s the best virtualization solution for your homelab? The other day a friend asked me this. I replied with two options: VMware ESXi or Proxmox VE. What is a hypervisor? In case you’ve been in the dark for the last decade, a hypervisor is a server that allows you to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) … Read more