Notes |

The mesh point that forgot it was a mesh point

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A firmware upgrade orphaned one half of a two-node AmpliFi mesh — the master jumped versions, the satellite didn’t, and the pairing quietly broke. Spent longer than I’d like to admit assuming the wrong device was the master before actually checking. Once both were back on the same firmware, re-pairing through the app took thirty seconds.

Six meters of open air, and why that's the easy part

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Planning a WiFi bridge between two balconies, two floors apart. The free-space path loss for six meters is trivial — maybe 40dB, nothing a normal access point can’t handle. The actual problem is that most omnidirectional antennas are weakest exactly straight down, which is almost exactly the angle this link needs. Math was never the hard part.

Migrating 15 Steam bots off a box that couldn't breathe

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A 1GB VPS finally gave up trying to keep 15 sessions alive at once — constant reconnect churn, memory pressure, the works. Docker on the NAS didn’t blink taking over the whole fleet. Three accounts needed a fresh 2FA code to log back in; the rest just picked up where they left off.