About ADHD Homelab
Homelab, explored at the speed of curiosity. 🌀
ADHD Homelab started the way most real labs do: with curiosity, spare hardware, and the quiet suspicion that there had to be a better way 🔧🧠. Less "follow the sacred text," more stepping into the Sanctum with just enough knowledge to bend reality without tearing it apart 🔮.
What began as a single NAS and a few Docker containers quickly grew into a hands-on experiment with virtualization, self-hosting, networking, and automation ⚙️📦🌐.
Along the way came Proxmox, OPNsense, VLANs, open-source tools, broken assumptions, late-night rebuilds, and the realization that learning happens fastest when curiosity is allowed to lead - even if it traps you in a loop you have to escape by understanding it 🔁⏳.
This lab isn't about chasing perfection or freezing "best practices" in time ❄️. It's about understanding systems by living inside them - testing ideas, refactoring setups, and repeating the same failure just enough times to finally see the pattern 🧪🔍.
If you've ever rebuilt the same service three different ways and only on the fourth pass understood why it failed, you already get it 😅.
Here you'll find explorations into open-source software, infrastructure design, networking, security, containers, virtualization, automation, and the practical lessons that come from running real systems at home - where cause and effect aren't always obvious until you rewind and watch it happen again 🔄🕰️.
If your brain works best by exploring first and naming things later, you'll feel right at home 🏠✨.
What This Site Is / Isn't
This site is:
- A real homelab, built and rebuilt through hands-on experimentation 🛠️
- A place to explore open-source software, self-hosting, virtualization, networking, security, and automation 🌍
- Documentation of systems that actually run, break, rewind, and get fixed 🔁🔧
- Learning in public, with context, tradeoffs, and the occasional "I've seen this failure before" moment 👀
- Friendly to curious, nonlinear thinkers who learn by doing 🧠⚡
This site isn't:
- A collection of copy-pasted tutorials or "just follow these steps" guides 📋
- A showcase of perfectly optimized, never-changing infrastructure 🧊
- A beginner-to-expert roadmap pretending everyone experiences time the same way 🛣️
- A vendor pitch deck or a "buy this exact hardware" checklist 💳
- Afraid to admit when something didn't work the first - or fifth - time 🙃
If you're looking for clean conclusions without the messy loops that produced them, this probably isn't your place 🚫.
If you're curious about how systems evolve through repetition, failure, and insight, welcome in 👋.
About AJ Tatum
I'm a software engineer and systems tinkerer with over two decades of experience building, breaking, and modernizing systems - professionally and at home 🧑💻🏗️. By day, I work primarily in the .NET and Azure ecosystem, helping untangle legacy platforms and turn them into systems that survive contact with reality ☁️. By night (and occasionally at 2 AM), I experiment with homelabs, open-source tools, and infrastructure design - often replaying the same scenario until the outcome finally changes 🌙🔁.
ADHD Homelab grew out of the way my brain naturally works: fast pattern recognition, deep hyperfocus, and a tendency to learn by iteration 🧠⚡. I don't just want to know that something works - I want to know why, what breaks when it doesn't, and which hidden assumptions were quietly shaping the timeline the whole time ⏳.
This site is where I document that process. The successes, the false starts, the rebuilds, and the moments where curiosity clearly outran the original plan 🚀. It's not about having the biggest or cleanest lab - it's about understanding systems well enough to recognize when you're stuck in a loop and how to finally step out of it 🔓.
If you're someone who learns by replaying problems, spotting patterns across attempts, and asking uncomfortable "what happens if...?" questions, you'll probably recognize yourself somewhere in here 🤔✨.
You can find my LinkedIn profile at:
https://linkedin.com/in/ajtatum