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Flashcards in the last 72 hrs:

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Currently Reading: Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

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Recent Manga: Ogami Tsumiki to Ki Nichijou. - Manga

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Patrick's Blog

Home server creation diary

Last Edited: Sat Aug 22 22:13:54 UTC 2026

A blogpost/log of making a home server environment, and re-tooling my webserver to use the home-server.

August 18: Motivation

Dear Diary, recently I've been wanting more out of my home computing environment. Retro and alternative OSs like Plan9 and Inferno have been utterly fascinating to me here lately, and this fascination coincides very nicely with a project I've been wanting to do for awhile: Ansible-ify my webserver (this very one you, reader, are using to read this post!).

I'm a bit uneasy about buying new tech. I prefer to buy things used, as you know, and I really enjoy the process of making something old become something new again. So, with that I'm going to start looking around for an old Mini PC I can just put in my router's cabinet. Don't want to rush into it, so I'll do it tomorrow.

August 19: Purchase and ideation

Dear Diary, today I bought something. I picked up a Shuttle XPC NC03U off of facebook marketplace. I don't know which processor it came with, probably the i3 but I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's the i5 (it'd be amazing if it's the i7, but I doubt it). It comes with 4GB of RAM and 32 GB SSD, which is not much, but hey it's a basic server so it'll be alright. I don't plan on port forwarding, so here's the plan to make it all work together:

Linode Nanode: Outer network edge

Home server: The real power behind the operation

Then, if there is room,

August 21: Disaster

Well. Dear diary, I just broke my gaming laptop. To be honest, it was on its last legs, so I'm not that upset, but at the end of the day it means I must buy a new PC. I ended up putting together a micro ATX build with a ryzen 9 9950x and a Radeon 9070xt, so it's going to be a powerhouse, but there's an absurd pricetag associated with it because of the AI bubble. I'm nervous to buy it, but I'll sleep on it.

August 22: Purchase, upgrades, and expansion

Dear diary, I feel uneasy. I made what is the most expensive single-item purchase of my life (okay well it was more like 11 items but it's a composite of those 11 items), and it was something I don't strictly need. Yes, I know I have some compute intensive hobbies but my work laptop and mac are very powerful in and of themselves. Yes I would need the PC to play overwatch, but oof man that pricetag. Anyways, I did buy it.

Furthermore, I discovered something: My laptop parts are compatible with the Shuttle! Further furthermore, it's got a 2.5" drive bay and I have a ton of old laptop HDDs at my dad's house that I can have him ship to me so now, I get to upgrade!

Network edge

Home server

Much more fully-featured eh? I'm thinking I'll have the following subdomains:

And for all of these services, I'll be using Ansible to stand them up/update them.

Anyways, diary, i'm still a bit anxious about the PC purchase but I can't lie and say that I'm not excited to build it and have an insane PC to use :P