The Short Version
Windows 11 told me my perfectly good hardware was obsolete. So I installed Linux, which I hadn’t touched in over a decade. Then I found out you can run AI models locally. Then I needed a server. Then I needed a network to connect it all. Now I have dashboards to track all the things I accidentally built.
This site is the journal I wish I’d had when I started.
Why “From the Windowless Basement”
Because that’s literally where I work. A small corner office in my basement, no windows, too many monitors, cables everywhere, and a growing collection of hardware that was supposedly too old to be useful.
I’m not an expert. I’m a tinkerer with decades of programming experience who got curious about what happens when you stop throwing away old computers and start plugging them together. I’d been into home automation and networking for years, dabbled with AI on the side, and a job change gave me the excuse to go deeper.
What to Expect
Every Thursday, I’ll send a dispatch from the basement. Here’s what I’ll be writing about:
- Making old hardware useful again — that laptop Windows rejected? It’s a server now.
- Running AI locally — what it actually takes, what it actually costs, and what actually works on consumer hardware.
- Home automation with AI — I built an AI that manages my thermostat. I also built a safety system to stop it from cooking us.
- The mess I’ve created — interactive dashboards to track the growing fleet of machines and services running down here.
What This Isn’t
This isn’t a tutorial site written by someone who googled it five minutes ago. Everything here comes from things I’ve actually built, broken, fixed, and run in production (if you can call a basement “production”).
I’ll share what worked, what didn’t, and what I figured out the hard way so you don’t have to spend three hours on it.
Stay in the Loop
If any of this sounds interesting, I send a weekly dispatch every Thursday morning. It’s free, it’s short, and it comes straight from the windowless basement.
More soon.
— Mike, NM8K