i put my whole website on one little box

yuldshah.com — this site — runs on a single server. one box. i can ssh into it. i can watch the logs scroll. if it falls over it's my fault and my job to pick it back up.

there's something deeply satisfying about that after years of everything being someone else's serverless abstraction. nginx in front, node behind it, sqlite on disk, a let's-encrypt cert renewing itself, systemd keeping the thing alive. no black box that "just works." i can see the whole machine.

is it the "right" way at scale? probably not. but this isn't at scale. it's my site. and i'd rather own the whole stack and understand every piece than rent convenience and understand none of it.

internet plumbing is underrated. everyone wants to build the app. nobody wants to know how the packet actually gets there. i want to know how the packet gets there.