So, Who Are You?

Growing up in the lower-income suburbs of Boston in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I didn’t have much exposure to technology. That changed the day my mom saved up enough money to lease our first family PC from Rent-A-Center. Until then, the only computer I’d encountered was a well-worn Apple II in my elementary school’s lab, where I played a whole lot of Number Munchers.

We also moved around quite often. By sixth grade, I’d already attended five different elementary schools—which (coupled with being the only awkward boy growing up in a house full of women) really hurt my ability to make friends. Instead of going to friends’ houses after school, I gravitated toward spending most of my free time in chat rooms, where strangers didn’t know me—or the baggage I carried. It was these virtual spaces where I finally found a sense of community that fueled my budding interest in technology.

Purpose

---

Welcome to my corner of the internet! I’m Moose—a cybersecurity analyst by day, a homelab tinkerer by night, and a perpetual learner with a dash of ADHD-induced hyperfixation. If you’ve ever spun up a Docker container purely to see if you could, or spent a Sunday rewiring your network only to tear it all down and start again, you’ll fit right in.

My intended audience is pretty narrow: me, my girlfriend, and maybe a few Googlers or Redditors seeking homelab inspiration. Yet, writing everything down is also an exercise in self-care. I deal with anxiety and depression as part of my day-to-day reality. I’m not a mental health professional, and this blog isn’t intended to replace therapy—but I find that documenting my homelab progress (and setbacks) provides a sense of structure that’s both cathartic and practical.