Matthew Brahms
Austin, TX
Hello, and welcome!
I'm a Platform Engineer living in Austin, Texas.
Away from work, I play classical horn, run a lot of miles, spend time with my family, and self-host more of my life than is strictly reasonable.
This blog is the "after-hours" version of all of that: mostly about self-hosting, with occasional detours into running, music, or naval aviation asides.
My background in tech
I started my tech career as a Linux Systems Administrator, and have held titles like DevOps Engineer, Software Engineer - Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), etc.
Although the job titles seem to be the "flavor of the day", it's mostly been the same job the whole way: keep systems building, running, secure, and reliable. Understanding why they broke, instrumenting all the things, and making the next deploy boring are fun parts of the job too.
Music
Music came first. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and studied horn at The Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
Years of practicing the same few bars until they were right still shape how I approach my work today. Music taught me about creativity and thinking outside of the box. Being able to communicate and think through things analytically are also skills that have carried over from my days studying music.
Self-hosting
Building reliable systems is the day job, so naturally I do it for fun too. I run as much of my own digital life as I reasonably can — part privacy, mostly the satisfaction of understanding the stack all the way down.
Over time, I have become quite passionate about digital sovereignty of my data, and that has grown more as our family has gotten larger. I think it a worthy pursuit to have my kids grow up being free from the "algorithm," without large tech companies driving what they see each day.
I also firmly believe that in the age of AI, craftsmanship has become an art that is fading. So while using AI in my home "ecosystem", it is important to have a place to self-host stacks that teach me lessons "the hard way". I think of self-hosting as "leg day" for my tech skills. I'd rather work on them in a place of safe experimentation so that my skills don't atrophy over time.
Running
I'm training for a marathon right now: base miles through the week, the odd race, and a long run every Saturday.
Running for me started as a way to release energy and stress by being outdoors. Going out for a run lets me focus on nature, get some fresh air, and think without any distractions.
Beyond these benefits, joining the Austin running community has let me meet so many amazing human beings that I might otherwise have never had the chance to meet. Going on long runs ("mass shared-suffering events") has let me get to know these fellow runners and given me a second family that I can depend on. You can find more about my running here.
If you don't practice movement in your everyday routine, try going for a run/walk. I'm a firm believer that running teaches you so much about life. Beware: trying it could change your life!
Naval aviation
A long-standing interest in carrier aviation is one of the deepest areas of "nerd-ery" in my life.
Having traveled to most of our nation’s aviation museums, I find myself dazzled to hear the stories of aviators that have achieved amazing things, see the aircraft that are technically so brilliant, and learn how aviation has impacted the course of our nation and world.
I've also found from studying naval aviation that much of what is written in the NATOPS (rules and regulations) has been "written in blood".
These lessons/tactics/processes learned the hard way often can be applied to other areas like technology. Digging into naval aviation and finding parallels to apply in other areas is a fascinating use of time!
