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I’ve learned a number of tools I’d never used before, and refreshed my skills from when I used to be a sysadmin back in college. I can also do things other people don’t loudly recommend, but fit my style (Proxmox + Puppet for VMs), which is nice. If you have the right skills, it’s arbitrarily flexible.
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What electricity costs in my area. $0.32/KWh at the wrong time of day. Pricier hardware could have saved me money in the long run. Bigger drives could also mean fewer, and thus less power consumption.
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Google, selfhosting communities like this one, and tutorial-oriented YouTubers like NetworkChuck. Get ideas from people, learn enough to make it happen, then tweak it so you understand it. Repeat, and you’ll eventually know a lot.
Younger millennial here: I don’t remember a particular moment, but it was somewhere during the 2nd Bush administration. Between the horrible things that happened in Guantanamo Bay, the completely unjustified war on Iraq, and the harm I saw No Child Left Behind inflicting on my own community, the country’s flaws were very apparent to me.
When an obvious charlatan got elected in 2016, that devastated my hope that things would improve.