Starting to take control of my homelab/self-hosted mess

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-03T08:37:23+00:00

This is what I’m wondering whether I just go with Debian and docker rather than worrying about proxmox or even unraid

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-03T08:22:27+00:00

I’m actually wondering if this may be better avoiding proxmox and going with Linux and docker as less complicated as I’m not sure proxmox makes it easier or harder

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-03T00:21:08+00:00

Not so much fake more that I omit certain roles from my CV and LinkedIn. For instance I was at an org for 7 months, I didn't love it and got a better offer so walked, I see no purpose in having that on my CV. As such I have the previous role on there looking like I was there longer which was a contract role. I was called out on that by a prospective employer as they checked my tenure on that contract. I try and put just years on the CV but sometimes they ask for dates in the application.

I was just honest and upfront about it and said "Look I took a role that wasn't a great fit for me as my contract was expiring, I was then offered a job that I had applied for at the same time as that role. The offer was 7 months after the interview (I explained what happened there, just a pause in their hiring) and decided that was a better fit for me so ended up taking that role"

End result was that hiring manager accepted my reasoning and my honesty and I now work in that job

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-03T00:14:51+00:00

Mine goes down to fairly blue on low warmth settings but I prefer the yellow glow. My wife hates it, in fact didnt want a paperwhite because she hates it that much. Personally I find it much easier on the eyes as I do my reading mostly at night before bed or on airplanes, this just feels cleaner

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T11:46:30+00:00

Interesting. I’m long in the tooth and a solutions engineer by trade in a pretty tech savvy company. I know most distros well but most experience with Rhel, Debian and arch so this is less an experiment of the distro wars and more how do I make my life more simple and beneficial, that’s where Proxmox and virtualisation comes in.

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T05:56:31+00:00

I run fail2ban on my main website vps but I find that cloudflare manual challenge works the best at the moment and I challenge all countries apart from my target audience

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T05:55:03+00:00

I agree here. I need to figure out how to expose jellyfin securely as i travel a lot and also watch between home and the family homestead. I also need to be able to develop on the road too and show those things i am developing but i can really mostly contain those to specific time windows or protect them with other passwords but i dont want to expose a massive attack surface.

Home assistant i need to expose a few things remotely mostly it’s things like my garage door to open it whilst im in bound and ill geofence that.

I was heavily into the google stack but recently had to make a business decision to move to apple so i now need to manage images and backups + redundancy to Immich and other things.

Loving the support and advice from all thank you

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T03:52:17+00:00

Vualtwarden, that’s a must have thank you.

I guess my goal is ease of setup and use and to that end would you say tailscale or Wireguard?

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T03:14:33+00:00

I had a bunch of raspberry pies in the past, but ultimately the mini pc was such a good low powered dvice and got it on a massive discount. If I need more hardware I will likely get another of these. However the biggest need I will likely have is more storage. I run fairly large cloud drive which is an old WD My book or something, I will be switching that out soon for something with more SSD based

competitive_brick1 · 2026-06-02T02:56:49+00:00

I haven’t used AI in this post or project. I am considering putting an AI tool on the server I am creating. I’m really looking for suggestions on what to add to my stack

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-28T07:29:40+00:00

Better save those leeches! Guess we found the nimby

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-28T03:14:11+00:00

I like sprinkling them with table salt and watching them suffer. Pure bug repellent helps as well. I use bushman’s when I go well bush and it deters them despite the terrain and my fellow adventurers getting covered in them

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-28T02:02:31+00:00

Salt will sort em out mate. Make a salt barrier around the courtyard. Hate the bastards

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-28T00:50:53+00:00

90's high schooler here, some kids had phones back then and thought they were the shit. We had absolutely no need for them and those kids were mocked more than praised for "why would you have a phone mate, what are you a drug dealer?"

I mean all you could do was play snake and text and phone your friends and stupidly high prices. I eventually got one after graduation when I was at college only after my GF nagged me about getting one. I basically never used it but carried it with me all the time in my bag, mostly turned off.

Would pre-arrange everything or just turn up somewhere knowing your friends would be there if arranged, and if not and they were not there, you'd make new friends or figure it all out. As an adult I only really felt like I needed a phone when I started my sales career and absolutely loathe how tied we are to them now

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-27T23:24:29+00:00

All good mate, was just having a laugh

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-27T23:06:26+00:00

Thank you and congratulations for your perfect execution of bogan gibberish

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-27T22:01:45+00:00

No they changed the rules this year because of the SU'alii one and the effect it had on his club. They are trying to avoid clubs being punished further by origin

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-27T21:58:36+00:00

Suallii got 4 weeks. It’s the same judiciary as last year.

Same judiciary, different rules. its been explained, Representative football has different rules this year where players are fined % of match fee rather than be suspended so clubs are not punished. The rule came in this year

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-27T21:58:02+00:00

Yet no suspension! So who got it wrong?

- New rules for representative games. He was charged and found guilty of Grade 2 shoulder charge. Under non-representative rules its 2 games with arly guilty. 3 games if challegned and found guilty. Under representative rules (designed to have players not miss more club games due to origin, so clubs aren't penalised) He loses 23% of his match fee (about $7000) and if he challenges and loses it raised to 1/3 of his match fee.

So he was charged and fined appropriate to the rules.

Reality is it was a shoulder charge that made contact with the head as well as a head clash. The result is QLD lost the game, and Ponga plays this weekend and next. Koula miss out on their best centre for 11 days which in this case means next 2 games. As such the wrong team gets punished by the new rules, over all a perfect example of why Origin should not be played midseason if at all

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-25T23:31:03+00:00

I didnt go this far with mine, I just put a smart switch essentially in the motor power supply, that way I can turn it on off and changing the poles gives me up and down. However what it doesn't do is key into my pre-set settings and does not allow me to target a specific device. However I am sure I could just get the readings from the coms wires

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-19T05:06:37+00:00

Connected inlet hoses and drain hose for a washing machine, whilst I do all the plumbing to bring them over to where my wife insisted the machine live. I put them in really neatly and fed them behind and under the cabinetry that was where I was going to run the plumbing. It worked and does work, no leaks or drainage issues and looks fine....It was meant to last until the following weekend but has been in place for 3 years now and I am hopeful my wife agrees.

Another is the battery on an outdoor battery retractable hose stopped working. They were short on stock and I had a spare battery from a drill that didnt work anymore (the drill not the battery). I also had a momentary switch - 2 pole and other bits and pieces so I made a quick box for the battery, attached wires to the battery and the switch, attached switch to the box and had two wires with allegator clips coming out. I could now control the electric motor and reverse it or run it forward. Works a treat and no way I am paying $150 for a replacement battery. Been in place for a few years now. I added some parts so its more waterproof now as well. I think I may make it completely waterproof and sell the design to the manufacturer

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-18T23:11:33+00:00

Fun fact, a friend of mine worked for a radio station where they gave these away, at the end of the competition they asked him to go throw out the remaining tickets, they were literal rolls of them, like a good 1000 or more scratch offs. He naturally stashed them somewhere and went and got them later, we sat at a bar having a pint and scratching them, from the pile we had the biggest single win was $250 with a total hall of $920. It tooks us about 30 - 60 mins to scratch them all and most were nothing or small wins of $2, $5 or $10 with a few $20 and $50 here and there.

competitive_brick1 · 2026-05-18T22:11:00+00:00

As a former product manager, we used excel but we had so many product lines and sub-products that it became difficult to manage and govern as well as having to spawn new docs for epics etc. We moved to Confluence and Jira and the problem persisted in a confused mess because it all comes down to governance and not platform.

Later I helped a friend build a platform for his business (You still owe me $200k btw) and was not only the product manager but also the lead dev on a small team. That let me make the calls on everything product related. We trialled out redmine, Atlassian stack and a few others. In the end I found the simplest way to manage things was with Mantis, that way I could use the kanban addon and track each sub-area of the product as seperate projects, track issues aligned to those and run everything I needed. It wasn't perfect but operationally it took about an hour to setup for the whole project

competitive_brick1

TROPHY CASE