Improving Send-Only SMTP Deliverability with SPF and DKIM

This draft rewrites a real mail operations note into a cleaner guide for improving send-only SMTP deliverability by wiring Postfix to OpenDKIM, generating per-domain keys, and publishing the required DNS records.

March 15, 2026 · 4 min · 727 words · Neil Borromeo

Installing Terraform on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

This draft captures the exact repository and package commands I used to install a pinned Terraform version on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

January 23, 2025 · 1 min · 171 words · Neil Borromeo

Certbot Renewal with a Docker Compose Nginx Reload Hook

This draft captures a small but useful operational pattern: run certbot renew from cron and reload the Nginx container afterward so the renewed certificates are actually picked up.

September 24, 2024 · 2 min · 329 words · Neil Borromeo

Upgrading GitLab from 16.10 to 17.0 Without Skipping the Required Step

This draft turns a real GitLab upgrade note into a cleaner walkthrough focused on the upgrade path, the intermediate required version, and the service checks I used after each step.

May 27, 2024 · 3 min · 552 words · Neil Borromeo

Working Around a Payment API CORS Problem with a Server-Side Proxy

This draft turns a raw CORS debugging note into a cleaner explanation of the real issue: browser-based cross-origin restrictions and the practical workaround of routing requests through a server-side proxy.

March 22, 2024 · 2 min · 360 words · Neil Borromeo

Wiping or Formatting a USB Disk from WSL 2

This draft shows how I used WSL 2 to attach a physical Windows disk, inspect it from Linux, wipe it with shred, and cleanly unmount it afterward.

March 6, 2024 · 3 min · 610 words · Neil Borromeo

Fixing a Cloudflared Tunnel by Reauthenticating and Recreating Credentials

This draft captures a common cloudflared repair pattern: upgrade the binary, refresh the login material, and recreate the tunnel credentials rather than guessing at partially broken state.

February 29, 2024 · 1 min · 144 words · Neil Borromeo

Fixing Thumbor SSL Renewal on an Aging Certbot Install

This draft captures a practical SSL troubleshooting case where renewals looked broken on an older Thumbor host, with the key details coming from the renewal logs and a manual run.

February 23, 2024 · 2 min · 400 words · Neil Borromeo

Restarting a Vault Container in a Staging Environment

This draft preserves a practical staging note for restarting a Vault service, checking logs, and bouncing a dependent infrastructure container when secrets-related plumbing gets out of sync.

February 15, 2024 · 2 min · 289 words · Neil Borromeo

Compacting a WSL 2 `ext4.vhdx` Disk

This draft captures the practical sequence for terminating a WSL 2 distribution and compacting its backing ext4.vhdx file through diskpart.

February 9, 2024 · 1 min · 201 words · Neil Borromeo