Foundry81

Performance vs Capability

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:42:20 +0000

Why buy a Hummer when an Accord gets you there just the same?

I’m not talking about off-roading; I’m talking about commuting. When I used to travel from Long Island to Manhattan, there was a pattern you couldn’t ignore while staring out the window. There were parking lots at train stations filled with two types of cars:

Running Your Own DNS Server in a Homelab - Architecture, Lessons, and My Setup

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:38:53 +0000

DNS is one of the most critical services on the internet, quietly hanging out in the background of nearly every transaction that takes place on the Internet and local area networks. Every website you visit, every API request, every SaaS application, and nearly every internal network service depends on DNS resolution.

Respect the Work: Why IT Buyers Don’t Need Another Star Wars Pun

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 01:24:56 +0000

Pop culture references are everywhere in IT marketing. Infrastructure campaigns are built around lightsabers from Star Wars, firewall ads are wrapped in fantasy metaphors, and compliance webinars are named after space operas. If you need 50 “clever” taglines, you can generate them before your first cup of coffee cools.

NFS Mount Lazy Loading: Fixing Slow Boot Due to NFS

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:34:52 +0000

If you’re running NFS in your Homelab, you’ve probably dealt with this at least once.

You reboot a machine and it takes way longer than it should - long enough to mentally inventory every possible failure point before the login screen appears. Maybe Docker has a bad day because a bind mount wasn’t ready.

n8n Zoom Transcript Analysis Workflow (and Download)

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:38:05 +0000

Chat transcripts are often packed with valuable information, much of which can be missed during a conversation. The quick mention of items that deserve more time than they were given, statements that are more powerful or clearly understood on paper rather than spoken, and serious statements masked by humor happen all the time - and the ability to extract the good stuff from them can lead to solving problems that may otherwise go overlooked:

Starting a Homelab the Right Way - With the Why

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 21:45:27 +0000

There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in Homelab culture: people start with hardware.

Racks of it. Blinking lights, enterprise gear pulled from datacenters, computing clusters before identifying a single problem they’re trying to solve.

The Self-Hosting Responsibility Spectrum

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:44:41 +0000

Not all self-hosting is equal. The difference isn’t hardware, its operational accountability.

I took good look at my responsibility matrix and decided it was time for an upgrade to clarify where systems sit and what it all really means in practice:

Homelabs, self-hosting, and doing whatever the fsck you want.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 03:04:00 +0000

“Homelab” is one of those worlds that mean everything and nothing at the same time.

Depending on who you ask, it’s one of these:

Bullshit as a Service

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:49:30 +0000

The modern keyboard warrior has evolved into something much worse, and all it took was access to free generative AI services - and no, this isn’t about AI-powered scams, it’s about poor judgment and getting lost in fantasy.

Running Your Own Mail Server: Lessons from 25+ Years of Chaos and Custody

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 03:04:00 +0000

Email is one of the oldest, most decentralized, and most politically fraught services on the Internet.

It’s also one of the messiest topics in self-hosting, Homelab, and other scenarios where you take operational responsibility for a service often best left to experts.

Your Intensity Brings Meaning

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:37:35 +0000

“We’ve traded intensity for meaning.”

I saw that line while scrolling LinkedIn between meetings yesterday, and it refused to let go. By the afternoon, I was repeating it in a meeting with an IT vendor who wanted help stabilizing a product that’s been mostly vibe-coded.