Sampson Ho

Sampson Ho

Self-hosting enthusiast. Data analyst. Over-caffeinated tinkerer.
$53 / month $636 / year
(These savings only apply if you value my labor at $0/hr. My wife is less convinced.)
📋 About

Self-taught developer and data analyst based in San Diego. I run a homelab on Unraid and a fleet of local AI models — LLMs, vision, multimodal — that I wire into tools replacing things I used to pay for.

The goal: own the stack end-to-end. The constraint: my wife has to think the server noise is worth it. She's ambivalent so far.

📉 Subscriptions I've Cut
ServiceReplaced ByBeforeNow
Google Gemini / ChatGPT Open WebUI + OpenRouter $19.99/mo ~$5/mo API
Google Drive Nextcloud + Backblaze B2 ~$25/mo ~$2/mo
Cloud Photo Backup Immich (self-hosted) ~$10/mo $0 (on Unraid)

Over a year that's a GPU upgrade. And the data stays mine.

🤔 Why Self-Host?

Data Ownership

My photos, documents, and chat logs live on my hardware — not getting analyzed by someone else's models. If a service goes under or changes its pricing, I don't lose access.

Privacy-First AI

Running local LLMs means I don't pay per-token or hand my queries to a third party. The 3070 isn't fast, but it's mine.

It's Fun (and Expensive)

These are things that are cool but my wife is less convinced about. The server rack lives in the closet. She's chosen to ignore it.

📸 Beyond the Terminal
📸 Corgi
🐕 Corgi owner
She runs the house. I just pay the server bills.
🏁 Marathon
🏃 LA Marathon
26.2 miles. Once. (Maybe again.)
🤺 Sabre
🤺 Sabre fencer
Fastest weapon. Best weapon.
☕ Coffee
☕ Coffee nerd
Aeropress and a grinder that cost more than my first server.

Swap the placeholder divs for <img> tags with actual photos.

📝 Updates
April 2025

Building a public landing page — chat & photos behind 2FA

sampshimi.com is public-facing, but the AI chat and photo library sit behind Cloudflare Zero Trust with two-factor. How to split public vs. private content on the same domain. Read more →

March 2025

Killing my Google Drive bill with Nextcloud + Backblaze

120 GB off Google Drive, self-hosted on Unraid, now paying pennies for B2 cold storage. Read more →

February 2025

Replacing Gemini with local AI — the real cost comparison

Open WebUI + OpenRouter vs. the $20/mo subscription. Performance, latency, and trade-offs. Read more →

GitHub: sampshimi LinkedIn: Let's connect Tableau: Public Viz Email: reveal