Information Technology Student, Liberty University (Data Networking & Security)
Technology Enthusiast and Homelab Builder
I am Jeremiah Dittmar, an online Liberty University Information Technology Student with a disciplinary focus on networking and security. I expect to graduating in May 2027. I have been learning Information Technology through practical personal and volunteer projects. I am currently seeking an internship in the field of Information Technology.
I have performed many personal homelab Information Technology projects. The most notable of these are my self-hosted media server, network-wide ad-blocker, WireGuard remote access VPN, and multiplayer video game server configuration.
I have configured and administered a self-hosted Plex media server for a few years now. I run the server on a modest desktop workstation machine to which I have installed Ubuntu Server. This allows me to run the server in a headless state. I installed OpenMediaVault alongside the media server software. This allows me to access the storage of the server through the network. The server began on a Raspberry Pi computer, but it has grown into a device that is used every day in my home.
I operate a network-wide ad-blocker within my own home. The ad-blocker is being served by a lightweight Raspberry Pi computer. I am currently running multiple different services off of this device through containerization via Docker. The ad-blocker is made possible through Pi-hole software. Pi-hole is a DNS filtering application. I have my devices receive their DNS routes from the Pi-hole software which passes unblocked domain IP addresses to the device while providing empty IP addresses for the blacklisted domains.
Because I wish to both access my local network while absent from my home and block advertisements on the go, I have configured a WireGuard VPN service on the same Raspberry Pi device that operates my ad-blocker. WireGuard allows me to access my home network without compromising the security of my home. WireGuard encrypts my traffic so that I may connect to my home network securely. Through the use of WireGuard I am also able to utilize the DNS of my ad-blocking service; thus, allowing me to block advertisements on the go. I have installed WireGuard through a simplified Docker container called wg-easy.
For years my family has enjoyed the video game called Minecraft. Although Minecraft provides a multiplayer experience, it is often only available when the host player is online. To provide an instance that allows any player to connect regardless of who is playing, I administer a self-hosted Minecraft video game server. This server is connected to a domain name and allows my family to connect to a persistent Minecraft world regardless of whether others are currently playing the game.
After the previous website administrator of my church passed away, I volunteered to build and operate the website. I began this process through a hosting provider and WordPress. This worked for my church for some time; however, updates to WordPress and the hosting provider's backend caused the site to break. Therefore, I decided to build the website from scratch using HTML and CSS. Although the site is simple, it is what my church desired. I now host the static pages through Cloudflare and keep the source code hosted locally through a Forgejo instance. This allows me to build the website locally and automatically push the updates to Cloudflare.
Here is a link to the website if you would like to see it
warrenbaptisttemple.com
Many of my skills and hobbies intersect into an interest of technology. Below are some of these skills and hobbies that I have acquired over time.