Hi, I'm Darby.

I run LambTech PC, a computer repair and custom-build shop in North Augusta, South Carolina. My training ground is the network and server setup in my own house: a real, always-on system that I design, break, troubleshoot, and document.

This site is where that work lives in public.

What I work on

• Hardware repair and diagnosis: storage controllers, firmware (BIOS) updates and recovery, failing drives, data rescue.
• Networking: an open-source firewall (OPNsense) with VLANs, network-wide DNS filtering, Wi-Fi planning, and secure remote access over WireGuard.
• Self-hosted services: photo library (Immich), media server (Jellyfin), file sync (Nextcloud), local AI models (Ollama), all in Docker.
• Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana and Uptime Kuma, plus a custom dashboard that diagnoses outages and sends phone alerts.
• Data recovery and organization: rescuing and verifying family photo and music archives from failing drives.

Read more

• The homelab: what it is, how it's built, and why.
• Fix log: real problems, how I tracked them down, and what fixed them.

How I work

Measure before changing anything. Keep a verified copy before any risky step. Write down what broke and what fixed it, so the next fix is faster. Every post in the fix log comes from my own working notes.