Adventures in Home Automation

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Hello friends, I have been busy on some of my other sites, so feel free to check out I Can Play There for more details. Amongst my dabblings, I have now created my own personal Artificial Intelligence LLM for my home. I am using Ollama as the scaffolding and the Gemma 4 and Heretic libraries, which are freely available. I then bootstrapped those into an OpenUI Docker image so that I could ask my AI random things without it going out to an external site like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. From there, I decided to add a new layer: home automation.

Now I should mention that I have always been wary of allowing an external AI system (Like Alexa or Google Home) access to do too many things in my house because those systems are potentially large targets where my little place in the world would end up being in the blast radius. However, by building on my private LLM on my servers that only live in my network and are not front-facing, I feel like the risk is much lower. In fact, amongst my systems, I only have two or three items that use cloud-based features because they won’t work without them. Everything else, however, is completely internal, and if I had to cut those cloud-based items loose, I wouldn’t lose too much.

I have to say, this has easily been one of the most interesting projects I have ever worked on. It can feel like hours of poking around in UIs, interfaces, and YAML, but when things actually work, it is visible and tangible. For instance, it might take a few hours to add the YAML configuration to build the automations and then make a dashboard to accomplish those functions, but the first time I pushed a button and heard my house speaker system say something… it makes it all worth it and feels like I am now in the future. Then, I added some fun easter eggs, such as making my AI provide me a “status report” that is read out through my AI like JARVIS from Iron Man. Or asking it to “open the pod bay doors” (essentially unlock doors which is not permitted by my AI’s saftefy controls) only to hear it tell me “I am sorry Dave, I can’t do that.” make the system uniquely mine and still fulfills many automated things that I actually need my house to do.

One of the biggest things I have learned in all of this is that there are a lot of very talented people in the Home Automation community. Many of the technologies we use every day already have integrations (either readily available in the HA framework or easily added by the HACS “Home Automation Community Store” lab). It really is mind-blowing to see how even huge names in the market like Vivint, Schlage, Nest, etc. have supported this ecosystem. I have also learned a lot about configuring things with YAML code, running them in detailed Docker containers, and allowing secure access to certain things from the wider internet when I am not physically present at my house.

If you have never invested in building your own LLM and making it do cool things, you should really consider the options that are out there; you’ll be surprised at how many unique things are happening in this field.

Doctoral Degree Conferred!

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This is an exciting time! As of July 30, 2025, Liberty University has conferred my degree of Doctor of Ministry – Theology and Apologetics. I have finally completed a terminal degree. I am still in awe of the volume of this step in life but also don’t know what (if anything) will change in my life any time soon but that’s okay.

For now, I am making use of that time I previously spent on homework to work on my other projects. Most of that energy has gone into my Ren’Py game “The Soundtrack of My Life”. I am still using AI to help me create the basic logic but then I am going in and making adjustments and, of course, writing the dialogue. It’s coming along nicely but I can also tell that I will likely need to add expansions later on to allow all of my ideas to be in the game. If I try to do them all, the game will never see the light of day.

Keep on keeping on!

Using AI – I’m Doing it Right!

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Hello friends! Wow, I think I need to revamp and modernize this site like I did with my other sites.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you all two new IT Projects I have decided to work on. They are both very different but also very similar. Plus, I am using AI to make them happen.

You guys know that I love programming but I simply don’t have the knowledge to write full-fledged programs from scratch as I only know entry-level knowledge across many different languages: Python, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, PHP, and Ruby. Thanks to AI, I can take my knowledge of HOW to do things and convert them into actual programs. So that’s what I am doing.

Project 1 – NuVerse TTRPG

This is actually a partnership with my BFF Marc (Starnum) with input from Thomas (Bengal). You see, Marc has been wanting to create a new RPG for some time and decided to draw inspiration from normal Tabletop RPG’s and from Magic: The Gathering. He has devised a framework that uses typical character sheets for managing stats, but uses an interesting system of playing cards like MTG to handle some aspects of combat. Enter – NuVerse!

He created a basic design idea with what slots to include, what kinds of mechanics he wanted and I even built a Character. However, to play it online via Discord or something else, it will be hard to keep track of all the cards and may make it difficult to interact remotely. I wanted to help so I did!

I fired up Gemini, Google’s AI, and explained to it what I wanted to do. I provided it with screenshots, logic documents, play-by-play troubleshooting, etc. The process has been slow going, but I have created a highly unrefined version that allows me to create cards on the fly and store them in a persistent database. It also allows multiple users to connect in a single space. Just today I implemented parts of the playing field (though I have some debugging to do). It’s coming along great!

Project 2 – DarkSeas MUCK+

If you have known me for a long time, you will know that I have always had an affinity for text-based RPGs like MUD and MuCK. In fact, there was a time about 20 years ago where I created a MUCK with my friend Scott called “Darkseas MUCK” (part of the inspiration for my first web domain).

It was going to be a powerful game with an entire naval scheme with boats, naval combat, pirates, etc. We built a few iterations of it running on TinyMUCK and got it to where it was smallish but each space was unique and I was building all kinds of cool rooms. However, in those days, you still had to use a Telnet terminal (or similar) to access the game. MMORPGs were all starting to come up (like World of Warcraft) and the world just moved on.

Now, with the new technology changes, I can finally make my original dream into a much cooler reality! I have started working on DarkSeas MUCK+. It draws inspiration from the TinyMUCK platform that I used to build the original one. However, it is 100% web-based.

I fired up Claude.AI (by Anthropic) this time. In much the same way as NuVerse, I created a React.js frontend and a Node.js backend. It’s also running on MariaDB like NuVerse. However, it is already packed with features and I’ve only been working on it for about a day. Don’t misunderstand, I am using Claude to help write the code but I am setting everything up, describing the ideas, debugging things, making subtle UI changes, etc. It’s really impressive what I have been able to accomplish in a short time. Here’s a sneak peek of it:

Future State

Unfortunately, these both live only on my MacBook in a half-developed way. However, I can easily build them into a fully-functioning website hosted on my domains (I might even replace the original darkseas.net site). I am already designing both of these things to be extensible and to change as we grow.

I am thankful to live in a time where I can use AI for a proper purpose!

Replacing my Gaming Laptop at Last

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Humorously, one of the more recent posts I made on this blog was when I purchased my Asus RoG Strix Scar II in 2019, over four years ago. That laptop served my needs for those four years and was a major upgrade from my old Alienware m17. However, at the beginning of 2023, I started streaming on Twitch for fun, thanks to my XBox Game Pass giving me access to a large library of games that I previously would not have access to or would not otherwise want to play.

At the same time this began, my RoG developed a strange illness in which its power supply would randomly not charge the battery. This means that when you unplug the laptop from the power supply (even if the battery shows a charge), there is a 50/50 chance that it will die instantly. Furthermore, the Bluetooth module (which I use for my mouse and gaming controller) would randomly just disappear in Windows for no apparent reason. I usually had to fix this by completely opening the laptop, jiggling the Bluetooth module, closing the laptop, and hoping that it will work.

Thanks to a gift from Uncle Sam, I had some money ahead after the tax season, so my wife agreed to let me pick up a new gaming laptop within a certain price range. I spent weeks researching and ultimately decided to return to the world of Alienware. My first gaming laptop (as you will likely remember from a previous post) was an Alienware laptop, which lasted for a long time. Most of the top gaming laptops I researched (including the newer ASUS RoG, MSI Titan, and Razer Blade) have a very long delay for delivery – I am talking months before I could even get my hands on any of them. The few that I could order directly were lower powered than the Alienware or much more expensive (some topping out at $7k+).

So finally, I selected a very high-powered laptop that was custom made for me by Alienware and it has already been delivered! Here are the specs:

Processor13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900HX (24 Core, 36MB Cache, up to 5.4 GHz).
GraphicsNVidia GeForce RTX 4090 16GB GDDR6 GPU
RAM64GB (2x 32GB) DDR5 4800 MHz
HDD2TB 2x1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
Display18″ QHD (2560 x 1600) 165Hz DCI-P3
KeyboardAlienware CherryMX Ultra-Low-profile mechanical keyboard

Suffice it to say, I am very excited to test out the capabilities of this monster! I have already done some testing with some of my favorite games and even completed a stream on Twitch with it. It has had no issues at all with what I have thrown at it.

If you would like to watch the stream where I unbox the laptop and share the story that got me here, please check out the YouTube video below!

I am now freelancing!

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Hello friends and readers! I have not posted much here as there really has not been much to post. I am working full time, raising the family, doing martial arts and all the other stuff. However, my wife’s job is in jeopardy due to some new laws so she does not have as many students to teach.

I have decided to try to fill the gap by offering myself as a proofreader/writer on Fiverr. So if you need any help with getting your term paper, article, book chapter or whatever reviewed and edited, please check out my seller page here: https://www.fiverr.com/share/bmGK41.

I promise I won’t turn my blog into an advertising site, this is just a way to allow my skills to be used and earn some extra cash in the process! Take care friends!

Moving to Warp Speed

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Hello friends! It’s been a while since I posted here and honestly, I have not had much to talk about in the IT world or the gaming world. My job has now transitioned to me being in charge of the Security Incident and Event Manager (SIEM) for our company and not any IAM stuff at all. I am still teaching my Liberty classes albeit with some dips from time to time due to class availability. However, I finally have something interesting to post about… I got a new gaming laptop!

As many of you might remember from a post way back in 2011, I purchased a brand new Alienware R13 gaming laptop and kept it as my primary laptop for many years. Then, in 2015, I added new hardware to the laptop instead of spending the $2k it would cost to buy a new laptop. This helped me get by for a few more years and I just settled for sub-par graphics and performance to still enjoy games.

Fast forward to March 2019, my laptop is now 8 years old with some minor hardware upgrades made 4 years previous. I generally keep my laptop near my living room chair so that I can easily grab it and start gaming when needed. This is usually behind a table in the living room. That is where it stayed. However, my children decided to bring popcicles into the living room. One of my kids did this and forgot their snack on the edge of the aforementioned living room table. The end result is that the frozen popsicle eventually melted and drained… right into the USB port on the side of my laptop.

For a week or so, the device kept working normally with only a few minor hiccups. However, I started noticing that none of the USB ports on the side that received the drip seemed to work properly. Even the USB receiver for my trackball was starting to randomly not work or forget that it exists. I knew that the drainage did more damage than I had initially planned. So, after much negotiating, my dear wife decided that I could officially purchase a new laptop.

I did weeks of research, asking countless friends for their suggestions. I also watched many YouTube reviews, read hardware articles, etc. Ultimately, I decided on the ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix Scar II. I have loved Asus for years and put their motherboards in many of my home built PC’s. I even purchased their router (not the best one I admit) and their monitors (surprisingly hearty). I didn’t buy the absolute highest end device, but I got one that is pretty darn beefy.

ProcessorIntel Core i7-8750 Hexa Core CPU
GraphicsNVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB DDR6
RAM16GB DDR4 2666mhz
HDD 512GB PCIe SSD
Display17.3″ 1920 x 1080, 144Mhz

Wow! This thing is really moving my gaming into warp speed. The performance increase in graphics is so ridiculous that I can’t even remember what it was like before this. Granted, some of my favorites such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, have not had much of a change in the graphics since 2011, but the world does look more vibrant. The change in performance on Skyrim was pretty noticeable as well, the world is 100 times more realistic and enveloping than I imagined.

The place I have probably seen some of the most improvement is in my go-to brain relaxer – The Sims 4. While it’s true that although I have some minor mods to change appearance, the Sims still do not look like true humans, they look more realistic than before. For example, one of the characters added with the “City Living” expansion is a character named Miyo Oko. She’s obviously designed to follow Yoko Ono as the basis, but then they added some very Anime-esque elements to her including hot pink hair and a silly kawaii shirt. When I was looking at her close up last night (using the cool new “First Person view”), I saw…layers in her hair… it was crazy. You can see individual layers of her hair and it doesn’t just appear on her head as a glob of pink. Plus, the “Get Famous” expansion causes certain Sims who have become stars to have a “Fame Shine” based on the level of fame they have. When one of the sims reaches “Global Superstar” they have enough stars glowing in the air around them to make the vampires from Twilight nervous. With this hardware, the shine seems to wash over the character and reflect off their bodies. I cannot explain how ridiculous that is on a video game.

I also found that the graphics on some of my other standby games has increased as well. For instance, I fired up World of Warcraft to do some mindless fighting for a bit. Blizzard made a texture enhancement about a year ago to all the base characters in the game. My old laptop was not really able to show much difference there, but the new one, it is quite pronounced. As the characters move, their clothes flow and bounce much like you would expect in real world conditions. The textures of their bodies, faces, hands, feet, etc. seem much softer and more detailed. But more than that… the world itself is 10x more immersive on this new gear. The sky, the grass, the leaves, the water, etc. it’s all so realistic that it is crazy.

I have one more big thing to try. I was offered the ability to pick a new game from a list of complimentary games as a bonus for purchasing my laptop. I ultimately decided on “Anthem” which was released only a few short months ago. I have not yet fired this game up to see what it looks like on the hardware, but I plan to do so very soon.

So far, I am very pleased with this new gear. I just wish I could remember to install the second SSD soon… running out of space very quickly.

Until next time, goodbye!

Sims 4: Get to Work – But Only Retail!

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Hello!

I know that this is normally my technology blog and I have a separate blog all about retro gaming but I have a gaming conversation that is not retro, only gaming. I have been a fan of The Sims games for years, having played every major installment of the game and most of the important expansion packs that came out. We are currently in the era of Sims 4 but I do not think any word has come out about Sims 5. Originally, I only purchased The Sims 4 base when it came out. I later purchased The Sims 4: Get to Work because I liked being able to follow my sim to work. Just recently, I saw a good deal from EA and purchased “Get Together” and “Vampires”. Obviously, when I have new game content to play with, I have a period of time where I want to play more of the game to enjoy it.

So I’ve already had fun with Get Together EP because it allows me to be a DJ and allows me to create any number of things, including crazy cults if I so chose. Vampires is a whole other item entirely. I did enjoy playing it for a bit but decided that while I was happy to try the vampire life, I was glad to discover the cure for vampirism and return to being a normal Sim even though I’d forgotten how much time the sims spend going to the bathroom and making/preparing food. But I had another reason for curing my vampirism – opening a business.

I had expected that by working my character’s ability up to the  max level in DJ that I could get a job as a DJ but you cannot. I then figured that I could open a club and then be “self employed” as a DJ. This also does not work, at least not in the way it should work. You see, “Get to Work” only allows you to create a “Retail Lot” where you must sell things. You cannot even buy a lot marked as “Nightclub”. You CAN create a retail lot, send it to your library, then replace it on the world and mark it as a “Nightclub” but then you cannot own it. So unless I’m mixing and selling drinks (which you can do but it is really hard to do), you cannot run a night club.

However, I finally came up with a good idea – make a vampire-themed store. You see, I still have lots of vampire items (Plasma Packs, Plasma Fruit, Wolfsbane, Sixam Mosquito Seeds, and Garlic) that now, as I’m no longer a vampire, do not need. My trees still produce the fruit/seeds, so it’s easy to restock. However, the main item everyone keeps buying from me is a vampire-themed chair. This is a standard item that I’m selling even though you can manually buy it from the “Buy Mode” but I guess the NPC’s in the game can’t. Oh well, making $2k per night selling chairs is pretty good living for a former vampire. Now, if I can only make the DJ stuff more financially feasible.

I hope you enjoyed this interesting distraction from my normal posts.

Life Transitions

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It is long overdue time for my super delayed update to this blog and my obligatory excuse but this time I actually have good reason for real! As of March 21, I left my comfortable position with the University of Oklahoma to take on a new adventure… this time in a whole other state! I accepted a position with a financial services company in the Kansas City, MO area and started on April 2nd. This was not a decision that I took lightly as I did feel like there was much left to be done at OU but the more I considered some of the key issues – underfunded education for my children (see OK Teacher Walk Out), considerable process changes at OU and the state of the IAM program, I decided that the time to make a move had come.

I had been feeling the pain of the tightening budgets in Oklahoma (remember that OU is technically a part of the government of Oklahoma which is broke), lack of potential funding for future projects, and considerable power struggles that are par for the course in higher education, I decided to open myself to new positions… specifically ones that were not in the state of Oklahoma. I was in the running for positions from Palo Alto, CA to Austin, TX to Philadelphia, PA and… two in Kansas City, MO. Turns out that one of the positions in KCMO (as locals call it) had been looking to fill a position like mine for almost a year. After 6 months, the leadership found me and began watching me and waiting for the right time. Finally, they sent their HR team to ask me about the potential interest for the position. In looking at things, the city was only 5 hours away from Oklahoma so I could be close enough to my dear sweet mom and friends should I need them. With the potential salary offered, I could see a great potential to improve our life standing if I played my cards right.

The interviews occurred at breakneck speed. I had a phone interview with their HR person on a Monday. Then, on Wednesday, I had a phone interview with two technical people who I would work closely with. Then, on Friday, I had an interview with the hiring manager. A week later, I hopped in my car and made a perilous drive to Kansas City, MO (in the midst of ice and snow) and did my in-person interview. By the time I left KCMO, the manager basically said “you got the job, we just have to put the offer together.” So I waited and got an offer a few days later. The initial offer was heartbreaking because it was not what I had been told I could get and might not make the financial situation much better. I came in with a high ball offer and we met at almost my offer. The deal was sealed.

The next thing you know, I am working like a mad man to dejunk our house so that the paid relocation movers wouldn’t haul a bunch of junk. My wife and even my kids stepped up and started reducing. Fast forward to 3/26 and I am loading a UHaul trailer with the basic belongings we needed to start life until the movers came. I packed my two oldest kids into the car and I left Oklahoma. I wish I could say that I was a tough guy but I absolutely cried to leave my wife, three smaller children and exchange students at home. I spent the last week of March living like a single dad with two kids until I started my job. There were plenty of ups and downs including the trailer refusing to detach until I hit a bump at the school and sent it soaring into my muffler, ice and snow, flaking nannies and countless other things. However, the tide is slowly turning.

I now live in a house with Gigabit Fiber (unlike my 1 mbps line of sight internet), I have three floors of house space, it takes me less than 5 minutes to get to basic things and only 20 to get to even bigger things in my car. My commute is a bit more grisly as I spend about 20 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic to get into town. However, I can start to see the better school for my kids, the cheaper cost for most basic things, and most of all, a huge opportunity for growth. That’s where I have been and where I am going to be. My family will be fully reunited in June but until then, I feel the pain of a single, working dad with two kids. By faith I persevere.

Bundling choices with Twine

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Hey there my dusty old blog! It’s been too long since I last put some information out here. I am still actively involved with IAM at OU, still teaching at Liberty, and still doing things like watching Doctor Who and playing SWTOR. I was recently selected to be the Higher Education coordinator for the Identiverse 2018 conference in Boston and I am very proud to be making some efforts at getting presenters and content available. But what else have I been doing? Would you believe that I am writing programs again? Well… sort of.

For this to make sense, I want to back up just a few months. I have never been that avid of a mobile gamer. I have two phones (one for work and one for home) and certainly keep them on me frequently. I have a few fun time wasters like Subway Surf, SongPop, and Bejeweled Stars. But beyond a brief foray into Game of War: Fire Age (which I had to quit because it was an extensive waste of my free time), I really did not do much in the way of games. That is, of course, until an Ad in SongPop showed me a game called “Choices” by Pixelberry Studios. If you are old enough to remember the “Choose your Own Adventure” books where you read a section and then, decide to either turn to page 301 if you fight the giant or go to page 29 if you ran for shelter in the caves, then you will have a taste of what Choices is like. Basically, the game is really a meta game with many ‘stories’ included (many of which are frequently having new chapters added weekly) where you get to read text, make a choice, and the game reacts accordingly. Add the fact that you have some very nicely done artwork and cool (if somewhat predictable) music, and you have a game that is very interesting.

I started playing through the game “The Crown and the Flame” which is a medieval fantasy RP about a princess and her childhood friend who are attacked by an evil empire and ousted from their home. You play the estranged Princess (well, ahem, Queen) Kenna in parts of the story and in others you play her rough and tumble “person of unknown history”TM friend Dominic Hunter. There are some incidentals where you play other characters but these are usually short term. The story unfolds across 3 books that are at least 12-15 chapters each. I couldn’t get enough of this game because every choice I made allowed me to do new things and see this grand tapestry unfold.

After finishing the series, I jumped from “The Crown and the Flame” to “Endless Summer” which, by the cover art appeared to be a ‘spring break party’ story and ended up being what I lovingly call “Lost: The Video Game”. However, with its air of mystery, catchy soundtrack, and deeply troubling storyline, I was hooked hard core. I have since completed the entire Endless Summer series but was woefully unhappy that you can’t really ‘win’ the game if you aren’t willing to pay. Many games have ‘freemium’ features that are designed to make the game more interactive or fun, but they usually do not prevent you from completing the game. That is not the case in Endless Summer. I spent hours glued to the game trying different choices and occasionally opting for premium features, only to get to the Epilogue and find out that I can’t actually see the full end of the game unless I pay 60 credits to recover six items that are needed to see the full ending. I still haven’t paid this and I feel lied to. Now I am on to “High School Story” which is another two-parter but so far I have played through one book without any issues with the paywall.

So what does this all mean for programming? Well, as you all know, I have been an RPG fan for years, I even run a Retro Gaming Blog where I talk about various RPG’s from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega. However, I am also an avid tabletop gamer… or at least I was until my personal and professional life made time for tabletop gaming virtually impossible. I have created many different games in my years as a teenager and as a young adult that I played with my friends. In some cases, I even wrote an entire RPG system (called the Realm Wars system) connected to my original homebrew series, Realm Wars. I have also served as Game Master (GM) or Dungeon Master (DM) depending on your vernacular in popular systems such as BESM 2 and 3, Dungeons and Dragons 3rd, 4th and 5th Edition, Rifts, and several systems my friends created including the Super Anime Wars (SAW) system and many others. As if my nerd flag was not raised high enough, I originally created a nautical-themed Multi-User Cyber Kingdom (MUCK) with a nautical theme from which my original web server, Darkseas, earned its name. Even more? Yes… there’s more. I am also a closet writer who has created many stories, books, and poems over my life. I find that writing stories is extremely enjoyable work and I often viewed the various RPG’s that I ran with my friends as forms of creative story writing, just with a team of people instead of on my own.

Surely you see what this is leading up to… right? Well… I am bundling all that together (see the title). There is a neat program called “Twine” that I was exposed to as a technology used at my university employer to help “Gamify” learning material. It is basically a technology that allows you to create self-contained webpage games that let you… MAKE CHOICES! Ultimately, you can make your own adventures with a very simple language that includes elements of HTML (something I learned to hand code in my early college years). You can also make it very creative by either writing your own JavaScript modules/code to help you program things or use the built in functions of one of Twine’s built in languages (Harlowe, SnowMan, and SugarCube). If you know some Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which I learned enough to be dangerous with but never particularly excelled at, then you can make this game very shiny and interesting. That’s what I have started doing!

Now, I should say that I am still learning the more complicated aspects of Twine thanks to several awesome YouTube videos, but I can spin up a very basic game without much trouble. In fact, you can sample this by checking out my first full game that was a modified version of the Space Explorer game I learned to code on YouTube. I call it “Space Jump” and you can go out and give it a go if you’d like. As I get better at programming in Twine, I hope to take many game ideas in my brain and turn them in to fully playable Twine games. Maybe you’ll see one of my stories such as “The Meranite Chronicles” or “Osiris” turned into a Twine-based game. We’ll see.

That’s it for now! I am diving back into coding with Twine!