My homelab is a learning tool that became useful enough to keep some things alive. It started with a raspperry pi and docker and has evolved to multiple systems with backups and some decently complex networking.

Ive always seen a “homelab” as different from a “home server”. Homelabs are meant to be fucked up as you learn things. Have a home lab long enough and you end up with a test lab and production environment.

I vastly prefer it to calibre web personally, but it’s all up to personal preference. Kavita has a pretty extensive user guide too

I use calibre to label books by series. I don’t think I did anything crazy with the folder structure outside of putting comics, manga, and books in separate directories.

I have one media directory with books / manga / comics in separate subdirectories. I process metadata with calibre or other tools as needed, and point Kavita at my books directory and tell it to scan. Kavita should automatically group books of the same series together provided the series name is exact. (eg: “The adventures of Bob” vs “adventures of Bob, The” would be seen as different series. Kavita should also group the libraries together by directory, so I have 3 libraries, books, manga, and comics.

You do need to make sure books are all in the correct formats. I batch convert everything to epub and limit Kavita to only show epubs to avoid duplicates.

The upside to all this is that Kavita comes with a cleaner interface imho, opds is easier to set up, and I’ve had less issues with it. Also users can set their own reading lists and collections if you are setting this up for other users.

For books: mam (manually now that readarr died) -> calibre -> Kavita

If it’s a manga or comic, bypass calibre, straight to Kavita + komf for metadata / covers.

I literally use matrix voice for my d&d group every week lol, just join a server that has voice

Only thing I dislike is the lack of software based noise cancelling is a bit awkward but very managable

We have lovingly dubbed our table “pink tie” because we try to go in black tie but end up improvising in the worst way half way through.

Oh we need to sneak in? Uhhhh ok here is what we do. Hack the employee database, find Tim the IT guy. On his way home kidnap him, stop at a fast food place and demand to know his order, spend 2 hours roleplaying his interrogation. Ultimately decide to pretend to be a pizza delivery person dropping off pizza for a meeting, then say you need to use the bathroom to get an excuse to wander around. Get to the server but panic as you realize it’s been too long for the pizza guy to be “in the bathroom”. Rip the server off the wall and chuck it out the window and have the mage catch it with magic. Get caught trying to sneak out and get into a fight then hide the body in the janitors closet. Security on the way out gets suspicious about the blood on you. Explain it’s marinara sauce from dropping the pizza and start crying on demand about how your boss is gonna fire you because you suck so bad at your job and how you CANT miss rent again or you’ll be evicted and and and-. Roll deception VERY well. Make the guard uncomfortable so they shoo you out.

Success!