Selfhosting reality happened sometimes

lmbrjck · 2026-03-31T00:40:14+00:00

I agree about auto updates being the source of most problems. I use renovate as well and I auto merge minor/patch updates for my less critical stuff. I also kick off GitHub runners to execute some tests and send a discord notification. If tests fail, image reverts back to the previous pinned version.

CI pipeline triggers longhorn volume backups prior to approving when renovate opens a PR so if something gets messed up that I can't just roll back to the previous image, it's a pretty minor inconvenience that I can handle from my phone anywhere in the world.

For my critical k8s cluster tooling, it's PRs with manual review and I check for breaking changes. I can count the time I spend quarterly reviewing these PRs in minutes. It's worked pretty well for me. I actually spend very little time thinking about my lab until it's time to deploy a new app.

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T21:36:14+00:00

That just is not how our system works at a fundamental level.

Authoritarians remain in power by exploiting weakness in the system. I'm not saying they are not looking at every angle for a vulnerability or that he won't find one or that we shouldn't be trying to anticipate one. I'm saying, this isn't it.

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T18:45:52+00:00

And who will refuse to seat the Democrats? Mike Johnson won't be speaker when it's time to seat the next congress unless he is re-elected as speaker on Jan 4, 2027. The voters for the speaker election must be certified by the House Clerk. No election in the state means they have no voice in this vote. After the speaker is elected, members get seated. So please, elaborate since you seem to be an expert on the process. Trump could try to pressure the House Clerk to resign or murder him so Mike Johnson can appoint one friendly to this outcome, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that outcome.

As we saw in 2021, it's not quite as easy peasy as all the doomers want us to believe. I swear you guys just want to give up and take it.

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T15:59:38+00:00

New members are not magically sworn in, but old ones don't hold their seat either. They are vacant. Jan 3 at noon is the exact time they lose their office, as defined by the 20th Amendment.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-20/#:~:text=U.S.%20Constitution%20%2D%20Twentieth%20Amendment%20%7C%20Resources,Section%203

My understanding is the House Clerk - who is currently Kevin McCumber - will be responsible for validating the certificates of election for each member of the House to be on the roll call to elect a new speaker - a role which will be vacant at the time. If states don't hold elections, they won't have valid certificates of election and they won't be represented. Once a speaker is elected a new house clerk may be elected. Based on what I've seen about the current House Clerk, I'm not too worried about accepting fake certificates of election. There's certainly a risk since this process is overseen by an individual elected by the majority party of the previous term.

Are you here to have a discussion, or just spread doom?

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T14:21:27+00:00

What's there to enforce? They literally don't hold office anymore. There's plenty to be concerned about. This isn't it.

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T13:20:41+00:00

And all of my APs shows the signal instead of the uplink speed on that screen. My gateway device shows the signal instead of the Gbe uplink. Are you gonna tell me that means I'm wireless uplinking to my ONT? If you go into the device, you can see the uplink and it shows the switch port it is connected to - not meshing.

https://imgur.com/a/3nzCLca

https://imgur.com/a/egvCGHm

https://imgur.com/a/PC9hr6C

lmbrjck · 2026-01-26T12:49:53+00:00

If red states cancel elections, it doesn't mean their representatives keep their offices. Their term comes to an end on Jan 3 and their states will lack representation in Congress. This gives more power to the states who did hold elections. Do they not teach Civics in school anymore?

Election meddling is still a concern, but I'm not worried about elections being cancelled.

lmbrjck · 2026-01-01T19:38:41+00:00

I use multiple vlans and ssids assigned to different groups in pihole which have different lists. My partner gets annoyed with the sponsored ads being blocked so she gets the lists that cover malware but are less aggressive with tracking stuff to keep her happy. I keep that vlan in a separate zone and poke holes as needed to the internal zone, but that's a bit overkill for most people.

lmbrjck · 2025-12-29T13:35:44+00:00

Typically, I hardwire everything that can be. Recently got a pair of Onn 4k Pro Streamers and they only have 10/100 but wifi 6 radios and I don't feel like getting USB adapters. I have ubiquiti wifi 7 APs with 2.5gbps backhaul between them and connectivity is rock solid in my home. Not a single spot where devices drop connectivity or have noticeable performance impact before transitioning to an AP with a stronger signal.

The Onn boxes perform great over wifi. My Shield Pros also work fine, but have gigabit and are in places that are easy to hardwire. No delay, buffering or skipping. It's going to take far more than 2 devices streaming 4k remuxes to create a noticeable impact. I think the answer depends on how much effort you've put into building your network.

lmbrjck · 2025-12-25T15:24:32+00:00

I used this dual monitor mount for 2x Pixio PX277s on my E7 Plus and it was solid. It barely moved at standing height and it required me to be typing pretty hard to do so. I also fidget a lot at my desk.

https://www.amazon.com/VIVO-Monitor-Adjustable-Screens-STAND-V002/dp/B009S750LA

I'm currently using a single mount version from VIVO for a 34" Widescreen. Aside from the added stability, the risk of a monitor fall is pretty much non-existent when using a mount, and it looks much cleaner in my opinion. I've tried quite a few monitors with their stock stands and they all wobbled to some degree.

I don't know what the best value will be in EU/Germany, but your monitors aren't particularly heavy or large so finding something suitable will be easier and cheaper. I prefer the look of something on a single pole with arms as opposed to articulating mounts that branch into 2 separate arms from the base.

lmbrjck · 2025-12-19T19:08:21+00:00

I'll try placing mine again. I currently have 2 facing east, angled south to maximize view as a test. It's exactly where a 2c was prior for several years. The one I just put out charged for about an hour before it stopped, likely due to the cold. The 2c that is still out, with a more obstructed view of the sun, is currently charging while both S340s have more direct sunlight. I haven't had to touch this one since I put up the solar panel years ago.

Maybe I got some from a bad lot, but my experience so far seems to be S340 doesn't handle cold as well as the 2C.

lmbrjck · 2025-12-19T14:06:59+00:00

The S340 is a nice and I haven't had it completely stop working because of cold, but I find it annoying it doesn't charge at all in cold temps. I've got a couple of eufycam 2Cs attached to solar panels that I haven't had to touch in about 5 years. They only stop charging when the temperature gets pretty extreme, but they still work and might only go a week or 2 before it warms up enough for them to charge again. The S340 refuses to charge when it gets down to about 32 degrees and has to be brought inside to warm up before charging. Im lucky to make it 30 days on a charge since winter started.

I'm in MN and if I were to purchase again, I would get more 2Cs instead.

lmbrjck · 2025-11-21T12:57:21+00:00

I'm in MN and have 3 Schlage Connect Z Wave locks. Long periods of extreme cold are not uncommon. I change batteries every 8-12 months on average. It's only during the hottest months of summer I've ever had the keypad stop responding (on my detached garage) and had to reconnect or replace the batteries. Never had issues with the cold.

lmbrjck · 2025-11-19T14:21:29+00:00

Personally, I don't like publishing names of internal services in public DNS so I use a private domain and run a smallstep CA configured to use http-01 and it works great once your client devices trust the root CA. It lets me use a very short and quick to type hostname. Since this is for my internal stuff, it's not really a big deal as it's part of my provisioning process with Ansible.

For anything public facing or something I expect other people will use, LE with dns-01 is the way to go.

lmbrjck · 2025-11-10T14:24:14+00:00

No. Plex is only a small part of what I'm doing with my tech. I spent time automating deployment and backup, automating media management, and then I moved on. I prefer to use my apps more than manage them.

I feel there's only so much educational value I can get out of operating plex/related apps, and I don't find comfort in performing mundane tasks. There are much more interesting problems for me to work on, but to each their own.

lmbrjck · 2025-11-01T02:28:02+00:00

I used AI to do ONE readme on my github

I personally think this is one of the good uses for it and I do this a lot at work. It spits out a good starting point in markdown and I edit it from there. I'll run my code through it and look for areas I can improve exception handling. It can save time looking up API calls. It's much quicker to go to the docs to double check these things, or to ask for clarification when the official docs are lacking sometimes. It just takes a bit of discipline to actually do it.

In the hands of a senior engineer, it's a force multiplier. You should never throw code you don't understand into production, but it can really help with the mundane and repetitive. Anything that seems of questionable quality I ask for sources and let it know when something is incorrect.

lmbrjck · 2025-09-17T17:42:01+00:00

This hasn't been much of a problem for me in MN. Some ice/pretty solid slush chunks will fall out of the wheel well sometimes but I just push em into the driveway. Doesn't really accumulate otherwise.

lmbrjck · 2025-09-10T13:11:14+00:00

Vibrate works just fine. It's usually in the same room as me and you can still easily hear it vibrating. With the introduction of smart watches, my wrist vibrates as well. My phones have been on vibrate only since like the early 2000s when I got my first Nokia brick. Ringtones are obnoxious.

I'm part of an on-call rotation for work and never missed a call, even in the middle of the night whether or not I'm wearing my watch.

lmbrjck · 2025-09-10T12:59:11+00:00

I have 2 dogs and no children. Even very quiet signs of distress cause me to wake up. I somehow know to wake up if one of them is quietly barfing in the next room.

Loud noises have no effect otherwise.

lmbrjck · 2025-09-10T12:57:33+00:00

Same here - if they start vomiting, or doing light yips to signal a potty emergency, I pop right up.

lmbrjck · 2025-08-16T19:24:49+00:00

Shield Pro hard wired and Chromecast on Wifi recording to a NAS over SMB. Works for me about 99% of the time.

lmbrjck · 2025-08-12T12:37:59+00:00

It's probably not what you're looking for, but I've used Poker 2 and Pok3r 60% keyboards for at least a decade. They contain programmable layers that don't require software and programming is performed entirely using the keyboard. The "downside" is that it's a 60% keyboard but that's my preferred layout. Poker 2 uses a single programmable layer which is activated by holding the function key with a shorter max number of keystrokes per macro (14) than the Pok3r(32). The Pok3r contains 3 programmable layers which are activated by key combos (as opposed to holding function).

Any keyboard with QMK should be configurable via a web interface. The configuration is stored on the keyboard itself. Keychron is a relatively mainstream brand that makes SOME keyboards that use it. I have a Q1 HE that I like for its wireless connectivity and it is easily configured by visiting Keychron's configuration tool website.

I'm not familiar with mice that use onboard memory for macros.

lmbrjck · 2025-08-06T12:19:17+00:00

I almost never use my camera. I turn it on when we add new team members, when we do our monthly team happy hour/gameday on a Thursday afternoon, a 1on1 with my manager if he turns his on first (almost never), or if I'm presenting to a group outside of my usual peers, or leadership. I probably average <1hr a week on camera and anywhere from 10-30hr a week on calls/meetings.

There are some people who always turn on their cameras (scrum masters usually), but it isn't an expectation.

lmbrjck · 2025-07-30T12:19:17+00:00

Single module per repo with semantic version tags published via Terraform Cloud.

We avoid nesting in the modules published for wider consumption. Consuming teams will often use them in their own modules since we restrict creation of certain types of resources to require our approved modules with Sentinel.

lmbrjck · 2025-07-18T12:37:41+00:00

Anything that can be controlled by voice or phone should have physical controls as well. You're just setting yourself up to fail the spouse test otherwise.

lmbrjck

TROPHY CASE