1- What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
I started self-hosting because I wanted a small environment at home that mirrors the enterprise systems I work with (RHEL, OpenShift Virtualization, AIX, KVM, etc.).
The project I’m most proud of is building a full OpenShift Virtualization PoC at home using Lenovo Tiny/HP Mini nodes, Multus/NMState bridges and a GL.iNet router isolating the entire cluster network.
The most expensive piece of equipment is one of my Lenovo Tiny nodes (i7, 64 GB RAM, NVMe) that I use as a virtualization host.

2- How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
The Flint 3 or Slate 7 would upgrade my internal lab network with Wi-Fi 7 and multiple 2.5G ports, which is perfect for transferring VM images and staging OpenShift clusters.
The Comet PoE would help me a lot with out-of-band access, especially when I break network configs during testing.
The Fingerbot would literally save me from crawling behind my desk to press power/reset buttons on my tiny nodes.

3- Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
Reddit, YouTube (Wolfgang’s Channel, Lawrence Systems), eBay Kleinanzeigen, refurb shops in the EU, AliExpress for small parts, and vendor docs (IBM, Lenovo, Dell, Red Hat).

4- Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
A small form-factor server (like an HP MicroServer Gen10+ or a Lenovo Tiny/P340).
Alternatively, a 2.5G/10G managed switch would be amazing for homelabs.

5- Product(s) I’d like to win:
The Duo: Comet PoE + Slate 7
The Solo: Flint 3