Back to Farr Systems
~$ ./take_back_control

Take back your data, your devices, and your time.

Owning your own tech doesn't take a technical background or a spare weekend, that part's on me. Maybe it's a machine that's gone sluggish, a search result that rattled you, a bill that keeps creeping up. Below is the whole path, start to finish. Go as far down it as you want; plenty of people stop halfway, and that's fine.

// sound familiar?
  • >Your last gaming laptop ran slow inside a year, and you're not sure if that was the hardware or all the junk it shipped with.
  • >That "new" PC arrived with more ads, pop ups and "AI features" than you ever asked for.
  • >You're fairly sure you're overpaying for internet, but can't be bothered looking for a new plan.
  • >Every week Google, your TV, the apps you forgot installing quietly learn a little more about you.
  • >You once searched your own name and didn't love what stared back.

If any of those landed, you're exactly who this is for.

And if none of it did? No harm done. If you'd rather hand the lot over and never think about where your data lives, the fix-it-for-me side is built for exactly that.

// the upgrade path

It usually starts with one thing.

Each step stands on its own, and each one tends to make the next one obvious. Start anywhere, stop anywhere. It's your rabbit hole. I'm just the guide.

  1. 01// the build

    A rig that's all muscle, no padding

    Gaming or working, spec'd for what's coming rather than whatever's on the shelf this week. I price the parts at cost and show you the receipts, then build, tune and stress test it properly. Thermals sorted, fans quiet, nothing throttling under load.

    what you get
    • ✓Every dollar aimed at performance, not a retailer's margin.
    • ✓Tuned, debloated and cool, not just parts flung in a box on a production line.
    • ✓Straight answers on what's actually holding it back. Sometimes that's "don't upgrade yet."
    the honest catch

    A build done right isn't found in the discount bin. It's the one you're not angrily replacing eighteen months from now.

    →A fast machine running bloated software is a Ferrari stuck in first gear. Which is exactly how it leaves the shop floor, packed with junk the big retailers never bother to strip out.

  2. 02// the OS

    Stop paying the Windows tax in heat and watts

    Windows spends your hardware on ads, telemetry and background chatter. Strip it back to a modern Linux setup and the same machine runs cooler and quieter, with every watt pointed at what you're doing.

    what you get
    • ✓No ads in the start menu, no forced 2am reboots, nothing phoning home.
    • ✓A laptop Windows had written off, cool and quick again.
    • ✓Your games mostly come along too. Steam and Proton have come a long way.
    the honest catch

    Some things don't make the jump: a few anti-cheat games, Adobe's apps, the odd specialist work tool. For most people that's no loss. For some, Windows still makes more sense, so I check what you actually use before we commit to anything.

    a lot of people happily stop right here

    →Now the machine's lean and quick. Trouble is, it's only ever as fast as the line feeding it.

  3. 03// the pipe

    The router your provider hopes you never replace

    That free black box from your ISP is the weak link in most homes: underpowered and dropping signal two rooms away. I build on the GL.iNet Flint range instead. I'll find the right model matched to your place and budget, from the value pick on Wi-Fi 6 up to Wi-Fi 7 and multi-gig.

    Speed is the least of it. These run OpenWrt: the difference between a sealed appliance and a network you actually control. Anyone can buy a fast router, the value is everything built on top of it.

    what you get
    • ✓The right Flint for your home, set up and owned outright instead of rented from your provider.
    • ✓Hardware that's a platform, not a sealed box. The foundation the next steps bolt straight onto.
    • ✓The speed on your bill finally reaching your phone, TV and console with dead zones and lag spikes gone.
    • ✓Set up and tuned, not flashed with the defaults and left.
    the honest catch

    There's an upfront cost, and the value is in the setup rather than the unboxing. Buy once and it earns its keep against the box you stop renting.

    →Owning the box is step one. Next comes shutting the doors you never knew were open.

  4. 04// the walls

    Lock the doors you didn't know were open

    The boring kind of security that just works, running on the gear you now own. Your smart TV and guest devices get walled off from your real computers. Ads and trackers get blocked in layers, network wide, then down in the browser. And you get a private, encrypted way back into your own network from anywhere.

    what you get
    • ✓Most ads and trackers blocked at the router for every device at once (phone, TV, toaster included) with nothing installed on any of them.
    • ✓A hardened browser on top for the devices that matter, where even YouTube's own ads disappear.
    • ✓Chatty smart home gadgets walled off where they can't see your laptop or your files.
    • ✓A private tunnel home, so dodgy café WiFi can't read over your shoulder.
    straight talk

    The honest line is about tracking rather than ads: stay signed into Google or Facebook and they still log what you do on their own turf, and no blocker changes that. Want that trail gone too? That's the footprint deep dive, a few steps down from here.

    another very common place to stop

    →Your network's now fast, private and yours. Which raises a cheeky question: are you actually getting what you pay for?

  5. 05// the bill

    Quit funding everyone else's intro deal

    Loyalty doesn't get rewarded, it gets billed. Those "new customer" prices are there for the taking on a loop, but almost nobody switches because it feels like a part-time job. So I make it my job, not yours.

    what you get
    • ✓We go through your internet and mobile needs and find the deal that's actually better, not the one with the loudest ad.
    • ✓A simple churn routine, so you keep landing intro pricing instead of sliding onto the loyal minion rate.
    • ✓Offboarding and onboarding dates set in advance with an automated nudge before each ISP deal expires, so it runs itself.
    the honest catch

    It means changing providers every six months or so rather than set-and-forget. A few minutes twice a year for real money back in your pocket. Worth it for most, not for everyone.

    →You've cut what you hand over every month. So: what if you stopped renting from them at all?

  6. 06// your own cloud

    Quit renting your digital life back to yourself

    Your photos, files, passwords. Most of it lives on someone else's computer, injected with ads and rented back to you every month. We can set up your own instead. One quiet little server at home, running Proxmox, doing the job of Google Drive, Dropbox, your password manager and a stack of apps all at once. It's yours, the subscriptions stop, and nothing leaves the house unless you say so.

    a few of the jobs it can do
    • ✓Your own photo cloud and file drive: the phone backs up to it on its own, searchable by face, place and date — no monthly fee, nobody mining them.
    • ✓A self-hosted password manager, locked down on your hardware instead of a company's that keeps turning up in the breach headlines.
    • ✓A media server for the whole house. Movies, shows and anime in one tidy library, streaming to any TV, phone or browser, with nothing ever "leaving the service."
    • ✓Smart lights, plugs and sensors run locally through Home Assistant. Answering to you, not a cloud overseas, and still working when the internet drops.
    • ✓The paper mountain, tamed: every bill, receipt and letter scanned and searchable in seconds.
    • ✓One box, room to grow: a private notes app, a recipe box, a game server for the kids, whatever takes your interest.
    the trade off

    It's real gear that likes the odd update. Set up well it mostly minds itself, and snapshots mean a bad change rolls back in seconds rather than ruining your night. If you'd rather never think about it at all, that's what the set-and-forget option at the end is for.

    →You've now pulled your life off other people's computers. Next, the uncomfortable one: what's still out there with your name on it?

  7. 07// the eye opener

    You've never seen yourself the way a stranger with time can.

    Type your name into Google and you may get the polite surface. With your say so, I look the way someone with patience and bad intentions would: your email, your phone, the usernames you've reused for a decade. Then I pull it into one picture. The data broker sites selling your details, the accounts you forgot you ever made, the old passwords sitting in breaches, and the dots that join up to where you live, where you work, and when you're not home.

    This isn't here to scare you. It's that almost nobody realises how far it goes until they see it on one page. Once you can see it, we pull it back: opting you out, closing the gaps, locking down what's left. You walk away with a visual report you can actually read, a plan to shrink your shadow, and a setup that stops the picture quietly rebuilding itself over the years ahead.

    what you walk away with
    • ✓A plain-English visual map of exactly what's exposed, and where.
    • ✓Opt outs filed with the data brokers selling you.
    • ✓A breach check on your old passwords, and the gaps closed.
    • ✓Optional hardening for the serious: a no-logs VPN like Mullvad, Tor for the genuinely sensitive, and VM separation so one part of your life never touches another.
    straight talk

    I can't make you vanish, but I can take you from wide open to a real pain to find. The serious gear trades a little speed for privacy, so we set it to exactly how hidden you need to be. Seeing it all on one page the first time is confronting. That's rather the point.

    →Build, OS, network, bills, your own cloud, footprint. That's a lot of plates to keep spinning. Unless you'd rather not touch any of it…

  8. 08// set & forget

    …Or, never think about any of it again

    Prefer it handled? I keep the lot patched, backed up and monitored as a quiet ongoing arrangement. Something plays up and I'm usually already on it before you've noticed.

    what you get
    • ✓Updates, backups and security handled in the background.
    • ✓Priority help when something does go sideways.
    • ✓One person who already knows your setup, so there's no explaining it from scratch every time.
    worth knowing

    It's an ongoing cost, not a one-off. Plenty of people don't need it. But if what you're really after is not having to think about any of this, this is the piece that gets you there.

// before you ask: isn't Linux hard?

Linux isn't what it was ten years ago.

"You'll live in the command line."
You'll click around a clean desktop, same as now. The terminal's there if you ever want it. You won't need to.
"None of my stuff will work."
Browser, email, documents, streaming, video calls and a huge chunk of your Steam library all work. The few that won't (some anti-cheat games, Adobe) I flag before we start.
"It'll be ugly and confusing."
It's fast, tidy and pleasant to use day to day. Most people are surprised how crisp and modern a Linux desktop looks now.
"I'll be on my own when it breaks."
You won't. That's the entire point of having me.

And what do you give up? Licence fees, ads, telemetry and the constant nagging. What you keep is a computer that does what you tell it, and nothing you didn't ask for.

// "I could just do it myself"
$ the DIY weekend
  • ~Reddit rabbit holes at 1am, twelve tabs deep.
  • ~A setup that works, but you're not sure why.
  • ~The reinstall for when it doesn't.
  • ~Your whole weekend, gone.
$ the Farr way
  • ✓Scoped and done in a sitting.
  • ✓Explained in plain English, so you can take it over.
  • ✓Done to a standard, not a guess.
  • ✓You keep the keys. Your weekend stays yours.
// where people actually stop

Nothing here is off-the-shelf, so take a single piece or stack a few. It all runs on the same plain rate as the rest of the site — $130 an hour, parts at cost with the receipts to prove it, and the bigger builds fixed-price before I start. A handful of combinations come up again and again:

The fresh start
new or reborn machine + Linux, set up around how you actually use it
Fast & private
Flint router + network hardening. Quick, quiet and locked down
The bill killer
connectivity churn + ongoing management, money back on autopilot
Cut the cord
your own cloud + footprint cleanup, your data home and your shadow, shrunk
The full descent
all of it, top to bottom, you just kept going
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