Owen Reynolds Personal blog

Author: Owen Reynolds

TPM chips the achilles heel of re-purposing old hardware for vSphere

INTRO Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips went into common usage in the early 2000s when the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) was formed by Intel and other companies to enhance hardware security by providing a secure environment for cryptographic operations and secure key storage TPM chips typically measure about 1 x 1 inch or smaller, if…
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BMW X1 aka “white lightning”

Let’s do a blog post in the format of ‘the 5 W’s’: WHO / WHAT / WHEN / WHERE / WHY, for my latest car purchase, almost an annual event now. I’ll go through the W’s in a different order: WHO: I’m 46 this July, I live in Laval (close to Montreal), Canada. I’m an…
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Let’s rack & roll with a Dell R640 to ‘serve the home’

The title of this blog was an obvious lift from the mighty Patrick Kennedy blog ServeTheHome Server Storage and Networking ReviewsCheck out the site or watch his related YT channel INTRO First, let’s start with some numbers 46 years old is my age as of Oct 2025 20 is the number of years I’ve been…
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Let’s visit the Florida Panhandle

My parents used to live as snow birds in Gulfport, Florida, which is close the city of Tampa. I visited them at their Florida home 3 times over the years, and I really enjoyed my time there They sold their Florida home in the spring of 2024, and around Dec of 2024, I missed it!…
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Let’s sell the house and rent for a bit

Intro At the age of 43, I bought my first home here in Montreal. It’s a modest home, a lovely ground floor that was completely renovated , with two smaller bedrooms upstairs. I moved from Winnipeg to Montreal in 2015, and from 2015 to 2022, lived in 4 different rentals, 3 out of 4 were…
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Let’s make the house a jungle

You wouldn’t know it to see my house now, but I lived most of my life as a certified PLANT KILLER. Big or small, none would survive under my watch! That all changed in 2022 with the purchase of my first home. As I’ve got a long-term interest in following the ‘snow-bird’ life like my…
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THE Mind-body connection: My path to a pain free life

All aboard the pain bus As IT folks, we aren’t known for our good posture. Sitting at our desks all day, using ‘ergo’ equipment just offsets constant wrist and elbow abuse from a classic keyboard and mouse setup In 2008, while doing an IBM server install in small town Canada, the server slipped while I…
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Let’s make a pergola

Intro Outdoor terraces are pretty common around Montreal , Quebec, Canada where I’ve lived since 2019. On a few outings last year, I took pix of the pergola structures with the purpose of attempting to build my own. As with any of my projects, I took my time to research what materials , tools &…
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Let’s paint the porch black aka #ProjectBlackJack

From the time I bought my house in May 2022, I’ve never really liked the look of the faded gray concrete porch, front walk way or first step At the time , I was a bit intimidated by the amount of work involved based on the various YouTube videos I reviewed related to painting concrete.…
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VMware PowerCLI automation for vSphere environmental checks

The TASK New automation efforts are often born from the need to automate repetitive tasks. I was a dedicated virtualization consultant from 2017 to early 2024. During that time, I’d often get engaged to help out customers who were running into performance and scalability issues with their vSphere environments, sometimes it started with the dreaded…
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