Cardinals Score Check from the Terminal
A 150-character shell script wrapped around MLB's hidden public API — how I check the Cardinals score from the terminal, no app required.
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Running 5 AI Agents as a Household Ops Team
Five AI agents, a kanban board, and a bullpen mentality: what I learned about lanes, silence, and not asking the crypto specialist to restart Docker.
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You Wouldn't Turn a Left Fielder Into a Pitcher
The framework-adaptation trap costs months. Three lived attempts — Hermes/OpenClaw, CrewAI hierarchical mode, and a generic skill-registry — and the rule for when to bend a framework versus draft the agent you actually need.
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You Don't Need a Better LLM, You Need Better Planning
Swapping models is the wrong first move for nearly every reliability problem in agent design. Five planning questions that matter more than your model choice — drawn from eighteen months building Brock at home.
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Writing Your Own Agentic Harness: Eighteen Months Building Brock
What I learned building a home-grown CrewAI assistant from scratch — twelve domain specialists, deterministic state pre-injection, output verification, and the day Brock confabulated an answer about itself. A baseball-shaped post-mortem on agent reliability.
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Wait, What Is OpenClaw Again? Hermes + OpenClaw Integration Explained
How Hermes Agent integrates with OpenClaw subagents through the MCP bridge and delegate_task pattern — a clean migration pattern for AI agent architectures.
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Voice-Controlled Smart Home With Omi AI and a Local LLM
How I connected an Omi AI wearable to Home Assistant through a local Gemma 4 LLM — turning voice commands into device control, and ambient conversations into an Obsidian journal. No Alexa, no Google, no cloud.
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One Year of Electric Bills: Before and After Solar
Real electric bill data — 14 months of actual invoice numbers — from a coastal Georgia home with 16.1 kW solar, 99 kWh battery storage, two EVs, and a retired IT guy who refuses to stop tracking things.
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Home Lab Networking: DNS, Pi-hole, Unbound, and How I Actually Set It Up
A retired IT pro walks through his home lab DNS setup: pfSense, two Pi-hole servers with Nebula Sync, Unbound as a recursive resolver, and why running a flat network with 60+ devices isn't as crazy as it sounds.
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How I Use Smart Home Tech to Keep My Golden Retriever Safe and Happy
A retired IT guy shares how Home Assistant, six cameras, a 99 kWh solar battery system, and Tesla Dog Mode form a real smart home pet safety setup for his golden retriever, Rudy.
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Cast Iron vs. Modern Cookware: Infrastructure-Level Comparison
Which is better: the 100-year-old daily driver or modern infrastructure-grade kitchenware? A deep dive into the economics and performance of vintage cast iron.
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The Science of Cast Iron Seasoning: What Actually Works
A data-driven look at cast iron seasoning - polymerization chemistry, oil testing, temperature experiments, and myth-busting based on real testing.
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Home Lab Monitoring Dashboard in Home Assistant
Learn how to monitor your entire home lab infrastructure using Home Assistant with real-time metrics, Docker monitoring, and automated alerts.
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Time-of-Use Rate Optimization with Solar + Battery
How I use Home Assistant to optimize electricity costs with time-of-use rates, solar panels, and battery storage. Real billing data showing 48% monthly savings after solar installation.
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Tesla Charging Schedule Optimization with Home Assistant
How I use Home Assistant automations to optimize my Tesla Model Y charging schedule around time-of-use rates, solar production, and battery state — saving hundreds per year.
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How I Set Up a 100kWh Home Battery with Home Assistant
A detailed walkthrough of installing and integrating a 100kWh home battery system with Solar-Assistant and Home Assistant for real-time monitoring, automation, and energy independence.
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Solar Self-Consumption: My First Year Results
Year 1 results from my 12 kW solar array and 100 kWh battery system. Real numbers on production, consumption, self-consumption rates, and financial ROI.
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How to Configure Ollama Cloud with OpenClaw
Learn to configure Ollama Cloud with OpenClaw for affordable cloud LLM access. Features Kimi-K2.5, MiniMax-M2.1, and DeepSeek-V3.1 with pricing comparison.
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Home Assistant Dashboards: Building Ones That Actually Work
Stop drowning in data. Learn how to build Home Assistant dashboards that answer questions in 3 seconds, not 30 minutes.
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OpenClaw & Ollama: The Technological and Economic Choice for Home Lab
Building a hybrid AI infrastructure with local inference and cloud tiers. Learn how to save 80-90% on API costs while maintaining premium capabilities.
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Cast Iron: From Grandma's Ugly Pan to My New Obsession
A deep dive into cast iron history—from Lodge's factory floors to the modern boutique revival. Plus one 60-year-old's late-in-life discovery of the greatest cookware ever made.
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Home Charging + Solar: The Ultimate EV Cost Offset
How to eliminate EV charging costs with home solar and battery backup—without net metering. Real economics, hardware setup, and why resilience beats ROI.
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Tesla FSD + Gig Work: Operating a Supervised Robotaxi
I'm using Full Self-Driving on actual Uber and Lyft shifts. It works. Here's exactly how the integration works, where it's brilliant, where it breaks, and what it means for the future.
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Gig Work + Electric Vehicles: A Match Made in Economics
Why EVs are the best vehicle for gig work (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash). The real math shows total cost of ownership is competitive with gas cars—plus reliability and comfort.
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Docker Stack Maintenance at 3 AM: Automating Your Home Lab
How I automated updates for 9 Docker stacks to run twice a week at 3:17 AM. The thinking behind smart automation and what to watch for.
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The Solar Battery Journey: 100 kWh of Independence
How I installed a 100 kWh lithium battery system, what went right and wrong, and why I'd do it differently. A deep dive into home energy independence.
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Home Assistant + Obsidian: A Self-Hosted Brain for Your Smart Home
Connect Home Assistant to Obsidian and create a living knowledge base of your home's performance. Data-driven smart home optimization.
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Living Off-Peak: The Real Economics of Tesla Charging at $0.06/kWh
How charging your EV during super off-peak hours can save you $1,500+ annually. The math, strategy, and why intentionality beats convenience.
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