Modern IT infrastructure, in five pillars
The framework I use to keep infrastructure sane: five pillars on four foundations, every component a CI wired to the rest.
Notebook
Compute × Operations
Where workloads run — servers, VMs, containers, endpoints. · Run it — provisioning, patching, incidents, SLAs.
Opinion notes
Expert hands, junior judgment
Implementing AI isn't buying a tool. It's staffing a team: expert at the task, junior at the call. Why that reshapes hiring, not just headcount.
On-demand Docker updates for when Watchtower blinks
Teaching my agent to update Docker stacks within policy: including the source-built ones that have no image to pull.
Phase 1: a golden image, and why SeaBIOS won this round
Building the cloud-init template every VM clones from. And learning the hard way that UEFI + cloud images + a serial console hides your boot failures.
Phase 0: read the house before you renovate
The first phase changes nothing. It just reads live state and proves how wrong the plan already was. Discovery is the cheapest phase and the most valuable.
Rebuilding my homelab as code, with an agent riding shotgun
Starting a phased, infrastructure-as-code rebuild of the homelab, and pairing with an AI agent that does the typing while I keep the judgement.
Hardening SSH on a fresh Ubuntu box
The five-minute baseline I apply to every new server before it goes anywhere near a network.