DEVing in a Container

I do a fair bit of development work for various side projects that I contribute to or work on myself. I wanted to be able to work within a container for a few reasons, and finally figured out how to do it.

Cyber Apocalypse – Phreaky

Continuing on with some write-ups from the Hack the Box Cyber Apocalypse 2024 event. This one wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was a pain and time consuming. I went through this process manually but one of these days I’ll have to see if I can find a way to script it out and make it appear faster.

Advent of Code Day 7

Advent of Code 2020 Map

As the holidays come to an end, I have completed (well not finished, but been working on while I had free time) Advent of Code. I’ve talked about this in years past, but the short of it is 25 days of coding problems. Day 7 has to do with playing a game of Camel Cards.

2024 Retirement Calculator

Rifle Military Biathalon U.S. Army

Now that Congress has finally passed this year’s NDAA, we know what the final pay tables for 2024 will look like. This updated calculator also includes updates to the IRS tax brackets for 2023 and the new VA disability rates that went into effect Dec 2023. Again, if you see any mistakes, please let me »

Building a (Cheap) Minecraft Server on AWS

Box Headed Minecraft Men

My oldest kid wanted a Minecraft server for them and their friends, but I didn’t want to pay to run one 24/7. What should have been an easy project turned into a lot of discovery learning. Save yourself sometime and read this.

Requirements

Requirements road sign

I’ve been an engineer for a long time. In order to solve problems, my customer gives me requirements so that I can provide solutions. But the process breaks when the customer shortcuts the requirements process.

One More Time About Time

Time Zones

I’ve written about the importance of having accurate time before, and have always said that it can be difficult to keep a proper clock. I’ve always looked at it from a technical standpoint but a couple of days ago, one of my students sent me a video
and it caused me to look at the topic of time from a completely different perspective.