Mid-Summer Update: Homelab, Projects, Certifications, and Some Lessons Learned
Since I decided to get this website up and forge ahead with a few projects, I knew that many roadblocks would arise and that each would be a learning experience. I’ll post updates to fully account for these, because I believe they offer valuable lessons to both newcomers and experienced tech folks alike.
One lesson learned that I can share right now, and I think it’s the most valuable, has to do with how we leverage AI. In this case, it relates to learning a new technology and executing a project: do not take shortcuts, and do not expect AI to make it a breeze. Rely on the documentation. For example, the documentation for Jekyll and GitHub Pages is far more reliable than asking AI for guidance. The same goes for setting up a SOC on a Raspberry Pi cluster—lean on the official documentation and user communities rather than asking AI to guide you end-to-end. AI is great for specific tasks that are easy to verify. But uncertainty begins to compound when you ask for a lengthy set of directions. Small hallucinations and minor inaccuracies can add up and derail your project if you’re not careful. Consult the smart people who came before you and built the thing you’re trying to use! I knew this, which is the real shame here. I wasted many hours trying to shortcut my way through, and I felt justified because I had no one to answer to but myself. But I wanted quality. I wanted things to work. So, here we are.
Another update: I finally earned my PMP certification after agonizing over it for so long and likely over-preparing. My takeaway is that I’m both temperamentally and technically inclined toward the material and plan to apply it to management. I want to be dangerous when it comes to technical IT and cybersecurity skills but I also want to lean into developing people and managing projects. The PMP/PMBOK material gave me valuable insight into myself and the kind of career I want to build. That said, I still want to hone my technical skills. So, I plan to complete one more technical cybersecurity certification aligned with my SOC experiment: earning my CySA+. After that, I’ll turn my full attention to the CISSP in late 2025 or early 2026, with the goal of taking the exam around my 5th anniversary at CISA.
After I get my SOC running and I do a few trials on it (and document all of that here) I am looking forward to building an AI chatbot. It’s just a proof of concept based on the writing of Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi mystic who came from India in the early 1900s to bring a liberalized brand of Sufism to the West. He was a prolific writer and most of it is public domain and written in English. I am also looking for the writings of his children and his students, but much of that is copywrited. The same came be said of the mystical writings that inspired Khan and the order he came from - the English translations were painstakingly made and most are also copyrighted. So I’m doing some legal digging and getting some consultation on that piece before I turn text into tokens and start training.
Aside from that, it’s been a hot and humid summer here in Buffalo. Just enjoying time with the wife and cat, doing CrossFit and cooking and entertaining! Further updates on these projects coming soon.