• the legendary collection of technology, wield the power of the thing closest to magic.

• I want all my data to be accessible from anywhere, securely, and privately
• phone data in a self-hosted server
  • mainly photos and videos
  • backed up on a physical USB drive
• computer data in a self-hosted server notes and tech files in GitHub
  • notes synced with syncthing (phone, computer, server)
  • backed up on a physical USB drive
• self-hosted server:
  • running Proxmox VE with:
    • NAS (TrueNAS)
    • Immich
    • Nextcloud
    • local services for labbing

• scripts-magic-spells - contains scripts or "magic spells"
• homelab - contains notes related to setting up the perfect homelab
  • also contains CLI tools necessary for homelabbing (e.g. docker, kubernetes, tailscale, aws-cli, ansible, terraform, etc.)

• all custom scripts are prefixed with ,
• includes ^copied scripts _heheheh
• this has tremendous benefits:
  1. , autocompletion on custom scripts
  2. distinguishable own custom scripts
  3. prevents name conflicts (script collisions on custom vs system)
  4. can have a script with the same name as a system command (e.g. ,ls)
• ref: https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/

• any language works
• I recommend Go (simple, fast as fok, and powerful) and Python (the swiss army knife, slow for large projects)
  • both are perfect for scripts alongside bash (use bash for scripts)

• it's often not about what you do, but how you portray it. (see perception management)
  • many people in tech don't understand business impact.

    Leadership is often illiterate in tech, jargon doesn't help you.

  • You need to make sure you communicate what you work on in business impact terms.

    I've seen plenty of people who will work hard and never get fairly promoted because leadership doesn't understand what they do and how valuable it is.

  • This is also super important for interviewing.

a lot of people seem to do the first two, without the 3rd, (stop being the idea guy and complainer):

• show impact and value early
• learn fast and be proactive
• point out problems, propose solutions and implement solutions

Learn to read the room.

• You should be able to understand how different people react to different actions. I've had good and bad managers, some that were friends, some were business only and I'd rather avoid. When a manager is chill, understands that work is about money, it's easy since they are on your side. When they are more stoic, network internally, find the good cross functional managers, make sure they praise you and see your work, they know the game, and they will help you.
• Sometimes, being in communication with your managers manager is also a good idea if they are friendly. I got a massive raise by quietly leaking that I’m interviewing and have offers for much higher comp. I never shared it with my manager, just the coworkers who I knew couldn’t keep a secret, and then suddenly, I got a 40k raise on top of my annual raise. I wasn’t actually interviewing.

• collaboration instead of competition (most people will reciprocate kindness)

When someone helps me with something, I’d make sure they get credit, their leadership knows they helped and how helpful they were, even if they never thanked me before. But in return, I’d have large numbers of people messaging my manager saying the same things.

Instead of trying to show off all the work I do, I’d let the messages that my manager would get do the talking for me. Why does this matter? It shows that I am valuable above what he is aware of. My manager knows I do ABC, but he doesn’t know I’ve also helped a bunch on XYZ.

TLDR: just be mindful of how you portray yourself (perception management). Understand how people are, and control what you say and with who. Job hopping helps but just hopping non stop won’t get you long term gains. You need to have title growth too. Staying in the same role but hopping for incremental raises won’t get you long term high TC.