My $0 AI Assistant Finally Has a Voice I Like
Phase 4 of my “JARVIS OS” project: a free neural voice that runs on my own server. Since Phase 2, my morning brief has been read aloud by the stock iPhone voice. It worked, but…
Data Center in a Bag Part 9: Building an Isolated Pentest Lab
Part 9 of the Data Center in a Bag project turned the travel kit into something I’ve now been actively using for PenTest+ study. After building the Kali Linux container earlier in the series, I…
Data Center in a Bag Part 8: VPN and Policy-Based Routing with pfSense
Part 8 took the Data Center in a Bag back to the firewall. After getting the network architecture cleaned up, routing the protected LAN properly, and adding Kali Linux as a portable security toolbox, I…
My $0 AI Assistant Now Watches My Whole Homelab
Phase 3 of my “JARVIS OS” project: one dashboard for three servers, with a watchdog that doesn’t depend on what it watches. Phase 2 gave my morning brief a voice and a single Server card…
I Audited My Own Website—and Found More Than I Expected
Security Audit Conducted: October 18–19, 2026 How a simple look at website analytics turned into a real-world homelab security investigation involving Docker, Git, cloud credentials, and automated recovery. It Started With a Simple Question I…
My $0 AI Assistant Now Talks, and Watches My Server
Phase 2 of my “JARVIS OS” project: a read-aloud morning brief and a server health check that only speaks up when something is new. In Phase 1 I built a daily brief that lands in…
Data Center in a Bag Part 7: Adding Kali Linux to the Travel Kit
One of the questions I got after sharing the Data Center in a Bag project was whether Kali Linux could run from the travel kit. That sounded simple enough. The original thought was just to…
Data Center in a Bag Part 6: When Port Forwarding Wasn’t the Answer
What started as a portable Proxmox server has officially become my Data Center in a Bag project. For Part 6, the goal sounded simple: make the Minecraft Bedrock servers behind pfSense accessible to devices connected to the…
I Built a $0 AI Morning Briefing on My Homelab
Phase 1 of the “JARVIS OS” project: a scheduled daily brief, built from real data, delivered into a notes vault. I wanted an assistant that could start my day for me: check my calendar, scan…
My CCNA Journey: Four Years, Multiple Attempts, and Finally Passing
October 8, 2026 After four years of on-and-off studying, multiple exam attempts, labs, practice tests, rescheduling, and more subnetting than I care to admit, I can finally say it: I passed the Cisco CCNA 200-301…