Since others were posting end of life style docs, here is another: https://www.erikdewey.com/bigbook.htm

Cloud options:

• Microsoft Azure offers credits for edu emails I think, and I think you can renew it annually. Also check their B1 servers. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/students
• Google free tiers: https://docs.cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#free-tier
• AWS | Not sure on this one, their website is confusing, but look into it: https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/
• GitHub “student developer pack” https://education.github.com/pack
• Oracle cloud “always free” options, bottom of this page: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
• InterServer(never heard of them before) offers 1 year of web hosting: https://my.interserver.net/student_signup.php

Self-Host locally options:

Honestly you can probably find a N100 or N150 miniPC online for cheap, like $200 USD or less. Install Proxmox(or just install Ubuntu or whatever), install Docker+DockHand, and then install Tailscale and from your laptop/computer with Tailscale on it. You’ll be able to remotely access it, spin up whatever servers you want, and I doubt your campus IT will even see anything due to the tailnet mesh.

If you’re not living on campus, then even better, just self host your own stuff.

3 arm Tux, nice!

Not sure why anyone is still using Verizon.

US Mobile has access to their networks and it’s cheaper. Same service. Been with USM for nearly 2 years now. My parents and siblings all switched over too. Moved our numbers over with zero issues.

Verizon not in your area? Cool, USM also has access to T-Mobile and ATT.

People need to learn to shop around, especially in the current economy we’re in.

Yeah and the stuff releasing right now will be “old hardware” in 5 years.

I’m still gaming on a Ryzen 1700X. And my GPU is a used RTX 3080 I bought off eBay for $500 two years ago.

That 3080 was over $1000 during the GPU craze last time. And what was I using before that 3080? A 1080ti I bought at MSRP, which I still have and is my backup because hey, it’s nearly 10 years old and still works.

I’m not saying go buy a dual core Pentium, but “old hardware” isn’t some boogeyman and “we will eventually not have old computers” is like saying we’ll never have old cars.

And guess what, if everyone stopped buying all this overpriced crap then prices would come down, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.

Great post and I agree 100%!

something new shows up

Doesn’t even have to be a new thing either. Video games are still used as a scapegoat. Same as with music, and TV shows, and movies.

The “internet” is still killing teenagers because of social media bullying.

I wished our lawmakers were of a less senile age so we can write and pass more appropriate laws for this stuff…but not much we can do.

And new computers can break.

Might as well never buy anything because everything can break!

This is where I’m at. I’m selling off some old DDR3 RAM I have and I’m hanging onto my DDR4 stuff and systems.

Just bought a 3700X to replace an aging Ryzen 1700X. $100 on eBay, so not bad.

For your 5800X if it does die(*knock on wood) then at least you can snag a 5700X or 5800X on eBay for $200. Hopefully that stays consistent.

Looks like someone used that shadify url generator lmao

Yeah and the e-waste centers will clean up the hardware and resell it.

It’ll be a flood into the market. Supply and demand and all that.

I’m surprised to not see this suggestion, but Plex does music pretty well and they have an app dedicated for music/audio called “Plexamp”. Though I don’t think this app is on things like AppleTV/Roku(haven’t looked).

It’s so-so when it comes to playlist building…but the app on mobile works and I use it for audiobooks mainly, but I am starting to plan to use it switch off Spotify here soon.

or should I consider other software?

Unfortunately I had similar thoughts and plans that you outline here(receipt scanning into budgeting), but the amount of work involved was…too much for my liking.

I instead opted for a paid solution, which is Monarch: https://www.monarch.com/

It’s $100 a year, but they have a promotion(they always run promotions), where you can do your first year for 50% off with code: NEWYEAR2026

So far my wife and I have been loving Monarch. We linked our bank accounts and other financial institutions(401k, brokerages, IRAs, etc.) and everything mostly “just works”. There is an odd time or two where a bank account needs to be re-signed into to re-auth because token/api expired/changed, but again, the app works and does things well.

I’d suggest looking into it. I’m usually a huge proponent of self-hosting everything, but this is one of the few things I caved on…

I see the mastodan handle, but is there a git or anything to pull try out myself? Would be hilarious to show this to some coworkers

It worked for me? Not sure if OP changed it, but it goes to the latest repo just fine.

The entire internet? Whatever problem you had on windows you can just Google it and there’s either a YouTube video, reddit thread, or some obscure forum post that fixes your exact issue by copy and pasting some Powershell commands or a random bat file or GitHub project.

Linux? It’s gotten better, but the community side can get quite toxic or outright ignorant of how to troubleshoot any kind of issues tbh.

I would appreciate some type of custom attributes, but the notes section works fine as-is, so definitely not a huge “need” IMO.

I have used Monica/other CRMs in the past, but they all felt a bit too corporate or “sales” driven like you said in your OP.

I spun up a quick docker instance in my test environment and I’m using it right now, it’s been quite solid! I do have some confusion with how relationships get applied(from/to in regards to child/parent), but I believe I just need to use it a bit more to get used to the “flow” of how it is supposed to work.

My biggest want/need is being able to select multiple people at once to add to another person, so I guess a “bulk” edit or multi-select. Like adding 10 “child” to one “parent” at once if all of the children have already been created. Or if some logic can be applied where if one parent(dad) has three children, then you add a spouse(mom) to dad, then nametag can auto-add or offer to bulk edit the three children to add the new spouse(mom) as a parent too? Just quicker/better/fluid workflow.

Again, the site as-is is already solid. Just some fine-tuning IMO.

This looks great. I’m running a Teable instance, but sometimes it feels like it is “too much” sometimes.

I think I’ll deploy this for fun to check out. I don’t see anything specific here for things like gift ideas or favorite flowers/colors? Like custom tags/categories/attributes.

I’m using Teable to track things like that, but I love the visualization here, reminds me of my obsidian mind map lol.

Ah classic IPoAC!

I run my webservers behind a pfsense firewall with ssl offloading(using a wildcard cert) with a static IP and use Haproxy to have sub-domain’s go to individual servers. Even though I’ve seen my fair share of scans, I only ever expose port 443 and keep things updated.

Recently though someone on here mentioned routing everything over Tailscale via a VPS. I didn’t want to pay for a VPS and frankly can’t even find one that is reasonably priced in the US(bandwidth limits mainly), so I threw Tailscale onto my pfsense, setup split-dns on Tailscale’s admin panel with my domain name, and then reconfigured Haproxy to listen on my Tailscale interface. Even got IPv6 working(huge pain due to a bug it seems). Oh and setup pfblocker.

My current plan is I’m going to run my webservers behind Tailscale and keep my game servers public and probably segment those servers to a different vlan/subnet/dmz/whatever. And maybe just have a www/blog landing page that is read only on 443 and have it’s config/admin panel accessible via my tailscale only.

Anyway, back on topic. I run my game servers and I don’t advertise them out anywhere(wildcard cert) and do whitelist only, yet I still see my minecraft servers get hit constantly on port 25565.

So not much you can do except minimize exposure as much as possible.

Oh for sure. Kind of forgot about that.

I usually build my own PCs, or I buy certified refurbished systems from eBay, so I usually don’t pay the Windows tax(or its baked in).

But definitely a good option to get something for cheaper, I do wish more systems had a Linux or no OS option.

And even if I plan to use Windows on a system, I usually re-install Windows anyway. Can’t be too careful with what has already been installed on something.