It All Starts With One Raspberry Pi
Self-hosting and homelabbing are fun, but let’s be honest — it is a slippery slope. If you are now thinking to yourself, “All I need is Nextcloud” or “I’ll just get a Raspberry Pi and run Home Assistant,” turn back! Submit yourself to the corporate overlords and spend time with your friends, family, or gaming for what it’s worth. It always starts small, but it never — ever — ends! There is always that one cool new piece of hardware or a service that needs to be tweaked, deployed, or improved.
I was in the middle of setting up CloudNativePG on my Kubernetes cluster to achieve high-availability for some of the services at home when I decided to digress and write these lines. And when I say that I was in the middle of it, I actually mean that I’ve spent a few evenings and a bit of company’s time doing research, configuration, and getting to the point where everything seems to be working.
Can it be done faster? Absolutely. But I also have a wife, a kid, and a couple of cats, so I can’t completely neglect my role as a responsible family member. And to be frank, I sort of know what will happen if I say to my wife, “You know, I will spend the whole Saturday configuring super-awesome-service, so you’re on your own with the kid. Good luck!” It won’t be pretty, trust me!
But there is a solution — or at least a way to get some kudos! Behold, the WAF. Those of us who’ve been doing this for a while know about this. For the uninitiated, WAF is the “wife approval factor.” Once in a while, you can stumble upon an app or a bunch of services (arrrrrrr) that can potentially simplify your significant other’s routine or serve as a good enough substitute for a publicly available service. Grab the opportunity, deploy it, do some marketing (but don’t be too pushy!), and whatever you do, do not perform maintenance during “business” hours. If you screw it up, the next thing you know — back to the corporate overlords.
Now, let me apologize in advance because it’s time to be brutally honest. No matter how polished and documented your setup is, no one in your household cares! When you die, your whole rack will be turned off before your body gets cold. Nobody will keep this thing maintained, running, and paying the electricity bills.
Accept it and enjoy the hell out of your hobby — because that’s what it is! Spend some nights on it or whenever you have time and energy! Buy a few hardware upgrades if you want! Be a geek!
For those who are interested to find out how slip is the slope: https://github.com/maxim-mityutko/home-infra
