From Pizza Night to Self‑Hosting: Building Technical Sovereignty at Home

In this short, on-the-road reflection, I talk about the value of simple family rituals—like Friday night pizza—as an anchor amid the chaos, and how that same spirit of intentionality applies to our digital lives. I share two recent touch points with privacy‑first, self‑hosted, open‑source hardware efforts, and why I’m increasingly convinced that veterans and builders in our communities will drive the next wave of technical sovereignty. From running services on bare metal and exploring wireless mesh to repurposing that old gaming PC, I make the case for starting small at home, helping friends onboard, and choosing optimism. We have the tools to reclaim data ownership and resilience—now it’s about using them together, with patience, love, and a bias for action.'Bitcoin (network and project)': https://bitcoin.org'ESP32 by Espressif Systems': https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32'Discord (community and chat platform)': https://discord.com'Amazon Web Services – Regions and Availability Zones (context for “us-east-1”)': https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions_az/'Fortnite (game)': https://www.fortnite.com'Escape from Tarkov (game)': https://www.escapefromtarkov.com'Call of Duty (franchise)': https://www.callofduty.com