Triumph: My old Speedtwin

Loved taking pictures of my Triumph Speedtwin in black and white. I was reminded of that today and here is one of my photos back from 2019.

Azure: Building your own voicemail-to-email service in the cloud

Most small businesses solve “we need a phone number with voicemail” by paying a flat monthly fee to a service like Google Voice or OpenPhone. That’s a perfectly reasonable choice — but if you’d rather own the code, pay only for what you actually use, and have full control over the call flow, you can build the same thing yourself… Continue reading Azure: Building your own voicemail-to-email service in the cloud

Looking for a Penn State podcast to follow.

Look no further. Try this We are father and son: a mutligenerational show for Penn State fans. Their latest episode. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/special-teams-and-season-preview/id6804518568?i=1000787070979

Network Testing from the Terminal: A Guide to Speedtest-cli

When troubleshooting a sluggish internet connection or configuring a remote server, opening a web browser to run a speed test isn’t always an option. For headless Linux servers, remote SSH sessions, or users who simply prefer the efficiency of the command line, speedtest-cli is an indispensable utility. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of how to install, use, and get the… Continue reading Network Testing from the Terminal: A Guide to Speedtest-cli

Architecting a Bulletproof Home Lab DNS Stack: Pi-hole v6, DJB dnscache, and tinydns on Fedora Linux

Here is a comprehensive, production-ready technical blog post detailing the exact architecture, challenges, and step-by-step solutions we implemented to make this complex stack work. Introduction Building a robust, privacy-first home network infrastructure often leads to mixing modern ad-blocking utilities with legendary, hyper-secure routing daemons. In this post, we walk through how to deploy Pi-hole v6 alongside a legacy Daniel J.… Continue reading Architecting a Bulletproof Home Lab DNS Stack: Pi-hole v6, DJB dnscache, and tinydns on Fedora Linux

SmokePing on Linux: The Best Way to Monitor Network Latency

Brief If you’ve ever wondered why your internet feels slow even though a speed test looks fine, the culprit is often latency or packet loss rather than bandwidth. This is where SmokePing shines. It’s one of the most effective tools for continuously monitoring network performance and producing beautiful graphs that make problems easy to spot. Whether you’re a home lab… Continue reading SmokePing on Linux: The Best Way to Monitor Network Latency

Fixing Eaton UPS Disconnections on Fedora (NUT v2.8.5+)

The Problem If your Eaton UPS randomly disconnects, throws “Data stale” errors, or crashes with a segmentation fault on modern Fedora releases, you are not alone. This issue stems from a combination of aggressive Linux kernel power management, changes in Network UPS Tools (NUT) v2.8.5, and permission conflicts with Fedora’s automated management services. Here is a comprehensive guide to understanding… Continue reading Fixing Eaton UPS Disconnections on Fedora (NUT v2.8.5+)

How to Run ASSP As A Systemd Service With Systemctl

Running the Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP) reliably on a modern Linux server requires a proper service manager. By default, ASSP needs to start as root to bind to privileged mail ports (like port 25), after which it forks and spawns its main worker processes under a non-privileged user like nobody. Using a custom systemd service file allows Linux to seamlessly… Continue reading How to Run ASSP As A Systemd Service With Systemctl

Why Tailscale + Firewalld Is My Ultimate Remote Access Stack

Setting up secure remote access usually feels like a balancing act between security and sheer frustration. For a long time, my server setup relied on Fail2ban throwing up dynamic walls via traditional iptables. It worked, but it was messy, cluttered, and stopping the service felt like waiting for water to boil as thousands of rules were torn down one by… Continue reading Why Tailscale + Firewalld Is My Ultimate Remote Access Stack