Who I am
A technology enthusiast focused on networking and security. I believe in privacy, decentralization, and taking control of your own digital footprint. Always learning, always building.
Rev. 3 · Palm Harbor, FL · Status: operational
I run the network,
and I read the manual.
Networking, security, and self-hosting — done on real hardware I own, in a closet I can physically walk to. This site documents what I build, what I break, and what I learn putting it back together.
DAWG-4037
Managed Human · 1U
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hover a port
6 ports · 5 linked · 1 negotiating
U1
About
A technologist who prefers owning the box
Passionate about networking, security, and the freedom that comes from actually understanding the thing you depend on.
What I do
Run a homelab that is also a classroom: pfSense at the edge, Proxmox on a PowerEdge, HAProxy in front, certs I renew myself. If it can be self-hosted, I'd rather host it.
Where it's going
From curiosity to capability. I document the journey as I go — including the parts where the cert expires and the whole thing falls over. Those are the useful parts.
U2
Focus
Areas of focus
Six ports on the faceplate. Here's what's plugged into each.
- 01 Network Security
- Firewall rules, VLAN segmentation, and secure architectures — designed, then deliberately attacked.
- 02 Privacy & Control
- Owning your identity and your data, instead of renting them back from someone else.
- 03 Decentralized Tech
- Distributed infrastructure and censorship-resistant hosting — what works, what's hype.
- 04 System Administration
- Hypervisors, reverse proxies, certificates, and the unglamorous work of keeping uptime.
- 05 Custom Development
- Building the tool when the tool doesn't exist. Usually small, usually sharp.
- 06 Continuous Learning
- The port that never finishes negotiating. That's the point.
U3
Projects
Projects & experiments
Things I've built, and things I'm still arguing with.
This site
Hand-written HTML and CSS, versioned in git, served from GitHub Pages. No CMS, no plugins, no database. Previously WordPress on Flux — the rewrite removed roughly everything that could break.
The homelab
pfSense at the edge with HAProxy reverse-proxying services behind it. Proxmox on a Dell PowerEdge R620 running the workloads. Let's Encrypt certs, automated — eventually correctly.
Privacy tooling
Testing and documenting privacy tools, VPNs, and secure comms — what actually holds up under scrutiny versus what just markets well. Findings get written up here.
U4
Writing
Recent writing
Notes from the closet.
- Watch it Morph This site, like the skill set behind it, is under constant revision. A note on building in public.
- Why Networking and Security? Why understanding the pipes matters more now than it ever has, and how I got hooked.
- Hosting on Flux What decentralized hosting delivered, what it didn't, and why this site eventually left.