On Sabbatical – Tech Tamer

Well, I have time for updates again. I have been very busy in linux (red hat) data center provisioning and patching. The led into yet another deep dive into fixing and improving DNS, DHCP, IPAM (DDI) with Infoblox – both NIOS and UDDI. Then I got to jump into architecting an enterprise solution for PKI – mainly SSL/TLS1.2 certificates, but code signing and S/MIME client certs too. It’s all automated with Service Now, Sectigo and ACME. There some edge cases where more specific automation was put in place.

I also moved back to my roots in the pacific north west. I’m outside of Tacoma now and reconnecting with my brothers. I also was able to take a couple days off this year and FINALLY see North America’s rain forest in the Washington peninsula. It’s amazing. To avoid crowds, I recommend hiking in the national forest instead. It’s been a long life goal to see the rain forest. It is unique, beautiful & smells amazing. I put a scratch ‘n’ sniff picture below.

Scratch ‘n’ Sniff – Olympic National Park, The Hoh Rain Forrest, Hall of Mosses, 2026

As I’ve been given this extra time, I’ll be updating this site with tech projects I’ve done. I have three shelves of raspberry pi projects. A few radio projects I’ve done. Python is everyone’s favorite, but I’ve been switching to rust for those embedded hobby projects. Most of my systems automation was either ansible, or “it runs everywhere” bourne shell. However, since we have AI now, I’d been moving to using rust for integration or migration projects. It’s outside my normal strengths, but with AI support, it’s possible and more learning.

I should add some write ups on Infoblox NIOS as it’s not well known, but a very, very good product. I know infoblox is pushing on UDDI, and it fits a need, just not at the global level of the amazing solution they have now. PKI and certificates – I made a private root CA and issuing CA to try out ml-dsa-65. I hope to make time to build out an AD environment and add a subordinate issuing CA to AD and see how that works as I’m rusty in the MS world. I did a project on my nVidia DGX and I need to submit a PR to LarQL repo.

At least that’s where I’ll start. I’ll need to add notes about docker vs. podman and artifacts on satellite/foreman. Then there’s the k3s – kubernetes on the raspberry pi zero 2 cluster – gotta write that up. Graphana & Prometheus are are something I should learn, so I’ll probably setup SIEM on my firewall. I do mean to move my websites away from wordpress and I’m thinking jekyllrb is probably the right fit.

Oh, I forgot – home projects. I’ve been meaning to refine my networking and firewall. I really want to spend time learning how to understand and debug multicast DNS and threads is a great way to do that. I am switching out of the apple ecosystem, so I should document the switch to graphene os and the use of home assistant. I need to move from plex to emby. To save money, I’ve put most of my ham projects on hold, but maybe I can get a 300mW meshcore node high enough that I may actually get heard.

Let’s see how far I get through the list! Thanks for checking in.

George Robinson has been taming technology since early elementary school. His first bitter taste of UNIX was Xenix 2.1.1. George's youth was spent in building electronics and writing programs to post on the local BBS. In high school, he became involved in student radio and was hired by the top station in the market. George double majored in Psychology and Music Theory earning a B.S. at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. After college, he rode the internet wave into Systems Administration. He has succeeded at Systems Architecture, Engineering & Automation with roles in numerous startups and enterprises like Verizon Wireless, Yahoo, Nestlé & Fico. George currently resides in the pacific north west, in a mysterious, undisclosed location somewhere outside of Tacoma.