Blog
Ideas, observations & rabbit holes.
Real-life lessons, personal infrastructure, family and client work, and honest thoughts along the way. Written by Albert LaScola.
2026-08-31
When a Technology Removes Scarcity, Some People Defend the Scarcity as Though it Were Quality.
When the method is your identity, automation feels like destruction. When the outcome is your identity, it feels like power.
2026-05-24
AI should not leave local people behind
AI is moving fast, but many local business owners and community members are being left behind. Here is why practical, calm, hands-on technology help matters now more than ever.
2026-05-17
Why I require AI in my database class
Notes from teaching database systems and information governance at Western Washington University. AI is required in my classroom, not banned. Here is the integrity framework, the course project, and the philosophy behind both.
2026-05-16
Running fiber 400 feet under my own property
How I got gigabit to an outbuilding 400 feet up a hill, for the price of a mid-range mesh router and a day and a half of digging.
2026-05-16
Make your traffic look like it's coming from your couch
A two-router setup, a GL.iNet Flint 2 at home and a travel router on the road, that tunnels all your traffic over WireGuard back to your residential IP. Works from hotels, Airbnbs, and coffee shops without breaking your work VPN.
2026-05-16
Why I run my own email server (and what it actually costs)
I spun up a $6/month box, dropped Postfix and Dovecot on it, and routed outbound through a relay so the mail actually lands. Here's the stack, the gotchas, and the real annual cost.
2026-05-16
What submarine sonar teaches you about detection engineering
Sonar operators don't chase the loudest signal. SOC analysts shouldn't either. Notes on transients, biologics, and the discipline of pattern recognition, learned the hard way underwater, applied to SIEM work.
2026-05-16
What this blog is for
Real-life lessons, personal infrastructure, family and client work, and honest thoughts about what works, what doesn't, and what I'm still figuring out.
2025-03-22
The Game Is Life… But What If That’s Not Just Fiction?
I recently read a book that didn’t just entertain me, it challenged everything I thought I understood about reality. It’s called The Game is Life by Terry Schott. The premise is simple… and wild: humans live in a highly advanced society where children enter a full-immersion simul
2025-03-21
The AI Edge: Outthinking the Chaos
The privacy and security landscape has fundamentally changed. It’s not just about firewalls and VPNs anymore, it’s about where you live, how you power your life, and how resilient your systems are when the grid, the internet, or the institutions behind them fail. The concept of “