Taylor Price
taylorbuiltsolutions.com
Taylor Price
@taylorbuiltsolutions.com
Software Engineer (C++, C, Linux, CMake, etc), Consultant, Father, Barbershop Chorus Singer
It's been a while since I've used a keyboard only editor and I've missed it recently. Here's a first post on getting NeoVim up and running on Ubuntu under WSL.

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/getting-neov...
Getting Neovim Up and Running - Taylor Built Solutions
Early in my career I had reason to use Vim when working on Linux based applications. I found that it made the editing, compile, test loop faster than it would be if I was editing on Windows. In recent...
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
November 6, 2025 at 4:59 AM
Software Development Isn't Writing Code. Yes that's somewhat clickbait. But it shouldn't be revolutionary. Software Development is solving problems.

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/software-dev...
Software Development Isn’t Writing Code - Taylor Built Solutions
Ok, yes, that headline is a hot take that borders on clickbait. And it is also true for many Software Developers/Engineers; typing code is often the smallest part of the job. From my experience figuri...
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
July 29, 2025 at 4:33 AM
In a meeting to introduce/introduce ourselves to a new software manager. My favorite introduction from a dev so far is “I do software”
June 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Another in the set of Minecraft related posts: How to connect a Switch to a private server that isn't a Realms server.

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/nintendo-swi...
How To Connect A Nintendo Switch To A Private Minecraft Server - Taylor Built Solutions
Would you like to play on a private Minecraft server on your Switch? Here’s how!
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
June 17, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Any #homelab or #cybersecurity folks willing to check out my "here's what I found out trying to host my own website" blog posts and tell me where I inevitably screwed up settings? I treat cyber security like electiricty: I know enough to know the danger but I know I'm not an expert
June 13, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Following on the theme of "stuff I figured out while setting up my #homelab" here's something I ended up figuring out while setting up my blog.

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/haproxy-ngin...
HAProxy & Nginx - Health Check Method - Taylor Built Solutions
When setting up HAProxy as a reverse proxy for my Nginx web servers I found I had to use the GET method instead of OPTIONS. Here's what happened!
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
June 13, 2025 at 12:58 AM
My most read/highest ranked on Google post is somewhat of a surprise to me. I wrote this post about setting up VLANs on PfSense to explain what I'd figured out at that point. If you have suggested changes (or things I got wrong) please let me know

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/pfsense-vlan...
PfSense VLANs and Access Between VLANs - Taylor Built Solutions
VLANs are a great way to separate devices into sandboxes. Here's how you set them up in PfSense and separate them with firewall rules.
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
June 12, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Taking a break from the LLM learning to stand up a Wordpress site for a family member’s side hustle. Went to sign up for a Twilio account thinking “oh this will be quick then we can send sms notifications to ourselves when the form is filled out”. Gotta verify myself. I understand why but meh
June 9, 2025 at 1:48 AM
I'm going through old blog articles and posting them on this account since it's a relatively new account (because I don't really want to use X). Please be patient with these posts (and read them if they're interesting!) as I promise I'll post more than my articles
June 6, 2025 at 6:20 PM
What is your #git workflow for merging your branches? I've had discussions at work for how to handle merging new features. I tend to use squash merge when merging a feature branch back to the main branch. Here's why:

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/git-merge-to...
Git Merge: To Squash Or Fast-Forward? - Taylor Built Solutions
When merging branches with Git what merge strategy should you use? Fast forward and squash are great options in certain scenarios.
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
June 6, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Elevator pitch:

Hey parents are your kids yelling about #Minecraft and having a tantrum because their #Switch wouldn’t let them connect to their friend *again*. Let us solve this by providing a world everyone can log into easily. Here’s an intro:

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/intro-to-min...
Intro To Minecraft For Parents - Taylor Built Solutions
So your kids are playing or asking about Minecraft. What is Minecraft all about? And what is a creeper? This is an intro to Minecraft to help out!
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
June 6, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Ok, maybe picking a project I’d already written a version of to play with LLMs wasn’t that great of an idea 🤣 … I’m finding myself thinking “why did the LLM make THAT choice? You note what, forget it. I’ll just fix it myself instead of practicing querying” 🤦🏼‍♂️
June 2, 2025 at 4:52 AM
Ok, I should get back to working on my LLM / C++ practice. I need to run Make ... how do I do that in neovim? Oh, look plugins! I should update my plugins! What was I working o.... squirrel!!!
May 31, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Remember to take time to #relax. Yes, your #hustle can be important but don’t burn yourself out
May 31, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Taylor Price
I’m not saying we should flood this line with UFO reports but I’m not NOT saying that either.
I know I should take this seriously but this ICE tweet genuinely made me laugh.
May 30, 2025 at 8:51 PM
For all of you #developers / software engineers / #infosec / IT folks out there hustling please take a moment to breathe and check in with your mental health. I struggle with #anxiety enough to take meds. It takes time and emotional energy every day to give myself grace necessary to do a good job
May 30, 2025 at 6:12 AM
I've got the code generated by the LLM for updating Cloudflare DNS records in C++ to the point where CMake will create a Makefile and I can start fixing what the LLM generated. The code isn't good but it still highlights that, for a small tool, simplicity is good.

github.com/taylor-built...
GitHub - taylor-built-solutions/DNSUpdateTool
Contribute to taylor-built-solutions/DNSUpdateTool development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
May 29, 2025 at 6:03 PM
You cannot expect others to understand what you mean if you don’t tell them. You can learn a lot about what they know and assume by not giving a complete set of expectations. But they won’t meet your expectations. They may even highlight expectations you didn’t know you had.
May 28, 2025 at 8:46 PM
I had to explain why I like to use #vim/#neocon to somebody. At one point in my career I was doing the edit, compile, run cycle from the terminal a lot and wanted a consistent UI everywhere I was editing? Now, though? It’s just out of stubbornness and the desire to say I can 🤣
May 27, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by Taylor Price
If you find an OSS issue that calls your attention, go for it. You don't need to ask permission to start working or have it assigned to you. If someone else sends a PR before you, that's great. You can use your knowledge of the issue to help review the PR, add tests, and validate the approach.
May 27, 2025 at 7:27 AM
I wrote a post about being surprised by how simple the code was that was generated by a prompt. It is certainly simpler than what I wrote for the project and has a couple decent ideas. But it definitely won't compile let alone work. Maybe too simple

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/ai-schooled-...
AI Schooled Me - Or How I Re-learned To KISS - Taylor Built Solutions
Recently I started my journey on learning to use AI for writing and programming. My first post was about the tools I chose to use and getting them setup on my computer. The next post I planned to writ...
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
May 26, 2025 at 6:55 PM
This is one of my favorite coffee mugs. I got it from the JPL gift shop when I had an interview. Did I get the job? Nope. Do I care? Nope, I got a mug and it was awesome to see where they ran missions and developed a lot of space tech 🤣
May 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM
This is very true. You can make changes like reformatting, framework/scaffolding, etc. But real business logic changes? Not often without a significant amount of time understanding the problem. Or a previously spent significant amount of time gaining tribal knowledge
- software engineering is, to a great extent, a question of institutional knowledge - this is not obvious to outsiders; the idea that you spend two months and have a truly impactful 1-100 line code change
May 26, 2025 at 6:10 AM
I’m getting started using AI to help write blog posts and write code. I’m using Ollama and Open WebUI to start. I’m sure add tools as I learn more. This blog has how to install the tools for this setup

What do you use #AI for?

blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/llms-using-o...
Starting the Journey With AI & LLMs Using Ollama and Open WebUI - Taylor Built Solutions
I’ve been a software engineer for roughly twenty years now. For most of my career I have worked on what many would consider “legacy code”; applications such as payroll calculations and some embedded a...
blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com
May 26, 2025 at 2:54 AM
Using #codellama to generate C++ code that I've already written myself to see how it compares. I'm impressed by the simplicity of the code generated. I also don't want to beg it to fix the errors in the code. My opinion that #AI should be treated like #wikipedia hasn't changed. Trust but verify
May 26, 2025 at 1:30 AM