Home on ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Moving Out and Learning to Adult

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:30:34 -0700

I moved out of my parents house about 3-4 months ago with my girlfriend of two years. We’re both still alive! Bills are being paid, and savings are being saved. I figure that’s a good sign that we’re doing well.

First of all, let’s start with the logistical side of being an adult. You have to pay for everything.

Emergencies
Food
Gas
Girlfriend Tax
Insurance(s)
Internet
Rent
Utilities

And at the same time, I need to think about investing in these:

Migrating Domains

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 16:42:11 -0700

Setting the Scene
The Checklist
- Mail
- Security Keys
Homelab
Website
Services
Conclusion

Setting the Scene

I was recently on Namecheap, my domain registrar of choice, reviewing my domain sua.sh when one called sua.dev caught my eye. This domain is particularly attractive for three reasons: 1) my nickname is sữa (milk in Vietnamese), 2) three letter domain names are aesthetically pleasing and rare, and 3) the .dev top-level domain (TLD) is perfect for tech-focused blogs.

Home Lab Tour - Hardware

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0700

In this post, I’ll cover the hardware that I am using for my homelab. This has been my biggest hobby for the past year. Later in a future post, I’ll cover the operating system(s) that I am running, any interesting self-hosted services, and future plans.

At the time of writing, my homelab is still modest, consisting of only two main computers.

The black server on the left is called “lab”. The raspberry pi is in the background to the left of the router and switch.

Neovim

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0600

Repositories
Plugins
Quirks

Repositories

My Neovim configuration is currently in two places: nvim and nixvim. Both of these configurations were heavily inspired by kickstart.nvim, a minimal starting point for Neovim with sensible out-of-the-box configurations and detailed documentation. The idea is that kickstart will give you the tools to build your own configuration, rather than providing everything like a distribution would (see LazyVim for example).

I have mainly been using the nixvim configuration since last year. It is powered by the nixvim project, a Neovim distribution powered by nix. It allows you to define your Neovim configurations using nix modules rather than typical lua files. This has the added advantage of build reproducibility and seamless integration into the rest of my nix system configuration.

My Linux Journey

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0600

Humble Beginnings
Linux but not really
macOS Era
Today

Humble Beginnings

I don’t think I touched Linux before I got to college to study Computer Science. The only experience I had with the computer is when I was playing video games with my brother and cousins. My dad tried to teach python to my brother and I when we were in elementary school on a Raspberry Pi, but that never stuck. I think that’s surprising because Bryan and I have always been pretty nerdy, but I guess it wasn’t that kind.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Experience
Education
Projects
Links
Contact

Hi, I’m Justin Hoang. I have been working as a software engineer since 2023. I have since graduated with two degrees in Computer Science and have been working full-time for about 2.5 years. This website is a space for me to write about what I’m learning about, probably tech-focused, and my thoughts in general.

Experience

Software Engineer @ Lockheed Martin Space (April 2024 - Present)
Software Engineer Asc @ Lockheed Martin Space (July 2023 - April 2024)

My primary programming languages are C++ and Python. I have used C++ extensively for developing high performance simulation software. Moreover, I am familiar with using Python for data analysis and validation. Recently, I have stepped into a role that oversees high-level software architectural design over a multi-container setup. Other skills I have are managing AWS EC2 instances and project management.

Deployment Status

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Now

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Here are my current interests that have been keeping me busy in no specific order.

My personal website
Self hosting infrastructure
Software Configuration
- My NixOS configuration
- My dotfiles configuration
Fitness
- Hiking
- Running
- Weight lifting
Literature
Music
- Classical
- K-Pop
- Indie
Video Games
- Hearthstone (Battlegrounds)
- Minecraft

Reads

I am a big classic literature and literary fiction fan, though I’ve been slacking recently. I’m building a better routine for 2026 by balancing my time listening to audiobooks during commutes and workouts, as well as reading physical books during my free time. Here are some of the latest books that I’ve read or are reading. Follow my Goodreads for a more up-to-date list.

Stack

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This page will aggregate the day-to-day hardware and software that I am running as a software engineer (and nerd).

Hardware

Audio
- AirPods 4
- AirPods Pro 2
Computers
- Acer Chromebook Spin 713-3w ¹
- MacBook Pro Max M3 ²
Tablets
- Kindle 10th generation
- iPad Pro M2
Wearables
- Apple Watch 10
- Oura Ring 4

Software

My general dotfiles can be found here and my NixOS configurations can be found here.

btop
lazygit
foot
firefox
- bitwarden
- darkreader
- uBlock
- vimium
fzf
neovim
prismlauncher
spotify
tmux
zsh

The Chromebook is running Fedora Linux GNOME, not NixOS, for stability reasons. Fedora has more out-of-the-box support according to the official Chrultrabook docs. ↩︎