Creatively Different Builds

  Post #017 — Network Infrastructure Network Security, Groups / Services. 30+ Devices. No Control. Here's How That Changed. Pi-hole dashboard — 32 active clients · 14.4% of all DNS queries blocked A few weeks ago I had 30+ devices on a single flat network. Everything could see everything. The router was handing out IPs without knowing who was who, and I had zero visibility into what was actually happening on the network. It worked — until it didn't feel right anymore. This isn't a post about blocking YouTube or locking down guest WiFi. This is about something simpler and more important: knowing what's on your network, giving each group of devices exactly the access it needs, and nothing more. Once OPNsense was back online and stable, this was the next step. The Numbers Right Now. CURRENT STATE 32 Active Devices On the network right now. All mapped, all assigned to a group. 14.4% DNS Blocked Of all DNS queries on the network. Blocked befo...

Eight Hours a Day, Constant Pain. A $50 Cushion Fixed What My Chair Couldn't. THE PROBLEM A while ago, I made what I thought was a great purchase: a gaming chair. It looked good, felt modern, and honestly, the price was hard to ignore. Like many people who work long hours at a desk, I thought a gaming chair would be more comfortable than a regular office chair. I was wrong. I work around 8 hours a day sitting at a desk, and over time, I started having intense pain in my tailbone. At first, I blamed my posture. I kept changing how I sat, trying to sit properly, but nothing really worked. Then the discomfort became constant. I started adding random cushions to the chair, hoping that would help. It worked a little, but the pain was still there, especially after long work sessions. Eventually, I began researching tailbone pain and sitting for long periods. That's when I realized something important: sometimes the problem isn't you — it's the chair. I thought m...

Post #016 — Making the Infrastructure Disappear Post #016 — Cable Management Making the Infrastructure Disappear. My Wife Was Right About the Cables. When the homelab becomes part of the office — and the office has to look like it The process actually started well. At least, it did at first. The original plan was simple: reorganize the networking equipment, reroute the cables properly, clean up the desk, and make the firewall setup look less like a temporary arrangement held up by stress and zip ties. Then my wife got involved. Somehow, the project shifted from "rewiring the office" to "redesigning the entrance wall to the office." Now we're installing decorative PVC wall panels. Honestly, she's right. Once the decorative panels came into play, the entire cable layout changed. Since the wall needs to look clean, the cables can't run openly behind the equipment anymore. Everything must fit neatly into floor cable channels and fol...

Post #15 — Stability Is Not the Same as Health Post #015 — A Personal Note Stability Is Not the Same as Health. A reflection on the things we stop paying attention to once they start working There's a pattern I keep running into, and it doesn't just show up in technology. It shows up in relationships. In routines. In the infrastructure around us — the physical kind and the human kind. The pattern is this: the moment something starts working reliably, we stop paying attention to it. We stop asking questions. We stop checking. We just use it and move on. And for a while, that's fine. Most things hold up quietly for a long time without needing anything from us. Until something changes. The Illusion of Stability When I started building this homelab — documenting it, writing about it, sharing what I was learning in real time — I kept running into the same discovery over and over again. The problem was never where I assumed it was. I would spend ho...

  Post #014 — Network Infrastructure OPNsense Back Online. What Failed, Why It Was Harder Than It Should Have Been, and What I Have Now That I Didn't Before The firewall is back. The network is under control. And the actual culprit turned out to be something embarrassingly simple — which is exactly why it took so long to find. This post documents what happened during the failed first deployment, why isolating the real problem was harder than it sounds, and what the network looks like now that OPNsense is running properly. Why This Was Hard to Diagnose. THE CONTEXT Troubleshooting a network while people are actively using it is a completely different kind of challenge. Every change you make has immediate consequences. Every minute without internet is someone's phone not loading, a payment terminal going offline, a business interruption. This property runs two active businesses across approximately 1,250 m². During working hours, the network isn't an experiment — it's inf...

Post #013 — Homelab A 2014 Mini PC. Two Services. Zero Monthly Fees. Self-Hosting Immich and Jellyfin on an Intel NUC This started as a practical decision. I had an Intel NUC from 2014 sitting on a shelf — stress-tested, cleaned, and confirmed working. I had a NAS full of movies and family photos. And I had two services on my list that I kept putting off: a self-hosted photo library and a local media server. The NUC became the host. The only real question was whether an 8GB i3 machine from over a decade ago could handle both without falling apart. It can. What This Covers. THE SHORT VERSION This isn't a step-by-step tutorial. What I want to document here is the sequence — the order things need to happen in — and the honest friction that came with it. If you've been curious about self-hosting but assumed it required deep Linux knowledge, this might change your mind. The rhythm is simple: 01 Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS Minimal install. No GUI...

Networking · Post #013 Turning Off the Firewall May 2026  ·  Creatively Different Builds  ·  ~6 min read Today felt like a loss. What I thought would be a simple task — changing two cables — turned into three hours of network chaos. Phones started ringing, people lost internet access, and I found myself battling cables, switches, Wi-Fi access points, and OPNsense all afternoon. My first mistake was changing the Wi-Fi APs from the 192.168.1.x range to 192.168.2.x. I needed access to the APs for configuration, but OPNsense quickly took over every connected device in its DHCP leases. Everything looked connected — but there was no internet. Then I moved on to cable swapping. The room looked like a battlefield. I went from point to point trying to isolate the issue. After about 30 minutes, I had already reverted most of the setup back to its original state but still had no internet. Eventually I realized the OPNsense con...