Atoms Lab
Personal testing ground for infrastructure experiments, homelab builds, and technologies I'm evaluating before they touch production.
What This Is
I'm an infrastructure engineer with 30+ years managing systems. Did my time with COBOL and FoxPro in the Air Force, worked my way through law firms and healthcare IT, currently managing 1500+ Windows servers at Tyler Technologies. Standard career progression stuff.
This site isn't about that work. It's about the other stuff—the homelab experiments, the proof-of-concept builds, the "let's see if this actually works" projects that happen in my basement before I'd ever consider them for production.
Think of it as my technical notebook made public. When I'm testing new AWS services, building Kubernetes clusters on recycled hardware, or trying to convince spiders to leave my server rack alone with strategically placed herbs, it gets documented here.
Why It Exists
Two reasons. First, I learn better when I write things down. Forcing myself to explain a technical concept clearly means I actually understand it. Second, I spent three decades solving problems and documenting almost none of it outside internal wikis that died when I changed jobs. That was stupid. This fixes it.
No tutorials on basic concepts you can find in documentation. No hot takes on industry trends. Just working notes from active testing where things break regularly and failure provides useful data.
Current Projects
Running a voluntary simplicity experiment—testing whether conscious consumption and digital minimalism produce measurable improvements in time and money. Also building out a Kubernetes test cluster, evaluating self-hosted monitoring solutions, and working through AWS SysOps certification prep.
The basement lab handles most of this. Mix of recycled enterprise hardware and whatever works. Not pretty, but functional.
What Gets Posted
Homelab builds and architecture decisions. Hands-on tool evaluations with actual results, not marketing claims. Proof-of-concept implementations. Scripts and automation for specific problems. Certification study notes where the official guides miss practical details. Failed experiments and what broke.
Sometimes casual observations on optimization protocols, life systems, and whether elite productivity habits transfer to normal humans without staff and unlimited budgets.
The Other Site
Production infrastructure experience and enterprise lessons live at jasonscottadams.com. That's the professional site. This is the lab.
Code: github.com/jason-scott-adams
Contact: jason@jasonscottadams.com
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