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Tech Log-Outlet Load Balancing-Homelab Room

  Tech Log-Outlet Load Balancing-Homelab Room Date: Week of July 20-23, 2026 SUMMARY: I reviewed and somewhat balanced the electrical load distribution in my homelab workspace after realizing that most of the equipment was concentrated on two outlets.  QUESTION:  My main question was whether any one outlet or circuit was getting too close to overload, especially with a desktop computer, dual monitors, networking gear, laptops, a UPS, and a laser printer all in the same room. Furthermore, the building itself and its wiring are over fifty years old. TESTING: I started by doing a simple breaker test using an incandescent desklamp. I turned off likely breakers one at a time and checked which outlets stayed live. That test showed that the room is split across two separate breakers: Breaker* #11: Outlets* A and B Breaker #12: Outlets C, D, and E *Breakers are numbered on the building breaker box, but the outlet numbers are mine, solely used for this Tech Log. The test was usefu...

Tech Log-Kali Linux Live USB (Tool Installation and Zeek Configuration)

Tech Log Entry — Kali Linux Live USB (Tool Installation and Zeek Configuration) Part 2 of 2: Network Analysis Tool Installation, Zeek Deployment, and JSON Log Configuration Date: June 30, 2026 Summary Following successful encrypted persistence boot (documented in Part 1), a full suite of network analysis tools was installed into the persistence partition of the Kali Linux 2026.2 Live USB. Tools installed include Wireshark, tshark, tcpdump, Suricata, nmap, netdiscover, tcpflow, jq, termshark (manual binary install), and Zeek (via official Zeek apt repository with symlink PATH resolution). Zeek was deployed via zeekctl, confirmed running with active log output, and reconfigured to output JSON-format logs for use with jq. All tools were confirmed present and operational across a full reboot cycle, verifying persistence is functioning correctly. Background and Context This entry continues directly from Part 1. The goal for Part 2 was to populate the 24.1 GB encrypted persistence partition ...