This is not hosted on a Bluehost or Squarespace or WIX….or whatever…This is my own AWS linux instance. No preinstalled apps. Nothing. Just a regular, vanilla EC2 Linux instance in AWS US-West.

I downloaded, installed and configured the LAMP stack on it myself and installed WordPress on it myself. I also manually migrated my old WP Database and content into it myself. I configured Apache for SSL and installed letsencrypt for my automatically updated SSL certificate. I also manage my own DNS, manually, in a different place. This includes creating all of the DNS records that make my site and domain good and searchable by google and also email services. No AI, I did it.

If I was to give one piece of advice to people – I would say that the very definition of freedom is learning and doing things yourself and not relying on others to do it for you. Just like I repair my own cars, computers, HVAC, plumbing and electrical. I do it. I save money and I cannot be held captive by scam artists.

I also built my own, off grid solar backup power system. I didn’t buy some pre-packaged Ecoflow or other pre-built system. I researched, learned, sourced and built everything myself. Between the panels, inverters, solar charge controllers, batteries, wiring and grid chargers…I spec’d it all and did it all….myself. And I save money with it by running my garage fridge and chest freezer completely off grid on it most of the time. It pays for itself…and I have backup power available from it in an outage. Unlike an on-grid solar system that many people are on the hook for $50,000+ for on their roofs that will immediately shut off in the case of a grid power failure (and some may not even realize that). This is also not to mention the manual power transfer switch that I installed off of a sub panel in my garage that I can use to connect my home built solar system to a strategically chosen electrical circuit in my house during an outage.

On the HVAC subject – I get saddened every time I see one of my neighbors getting scammed by an HVAC company into spending $15,000-$20,000 to replace their entire HVAC system upon a simple part failure. More often than not, it is just something simple that failed. Such as a run/start capacitor on a compressor or fan motor…or a contactor that went bad. These are $20-$40 parts on Amazon that you can buy and replace yourself if you just educate yourself and use logic.

Or it could be the main circuit board of the Forced Air Unit/Furnace as recently happened to me. I ended up troubleshooting and figuring out that a small capacitor on the main control board (PCB) had shorted out. I was able to find, identify and replace the failed capacitor on that PCB, plus a burned trace leading to it for 0 dollars. Just some sweat, knowledge and elbow grease and I was able to sleep in nice, cool, conditioned air again….on a weekend.

It failed on a Friday evening during 105 degree weather. If I didn’t know how to do things, I would have been at the mercy of an “emergency” dispatch by some HVAC guy that would charge me 3x normal just to do a service call the next day on Saturday. I would still be sleeping in the heat for a few more nights while he ordered up my new $15,000 system and installed it. I would get to suffer the heat for days and be out 15-20K for a $.01 part.