Managing Remote Teams

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

Proxmox vs ESXi

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

The Coronavirus And What I’m Doing

Panic. Mayhem. Stock market crash. Toilet paper shortages. School shutdowns. Is the Corona virus something to panic about? The Coronavirus, or COVID-19 is not on the top 10 things I’m concerned about. But because of the number of people bringing this topic up I thought I’d make a page I can point people at. Am … Read more

AMD 8-Core EPYC Home Server Build

AMD’s new EPYC 3201 is a good processor for a near-silent server …without sacrificing performance. I saw good price on an open box Supermicro M11SDV-8C-LN4F. It includes an embedded AMD EPYC 3201 8-core processor (Update: 2023-03-21: the 3201 is no longer available, I’ve updated the post and links to point at the newer 3251). I’ve … Read more

Snowplow Proof Mailbox

Last Saturday our mailbox was taken out by a snow plow! This was a job for something besides duct tape (although that did cross my mind). I ran down to the hardware store but couldn’t find a support arm that would fit the post. I couldn’t find any mailbox support arms. Actually I’m not good … Read more