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The actual setup, not the wishlist.

Hardware, software, and small workflow choices I've settled on after a few years of shipping CRM and ERP work from Abu Dhabi. Updated whenever something genuinely changes — not when a sponsor pays me to say so.

Daily driver

What sits on the desk every morning before the first commit.

  • MacBook Air M4Pinned

    16-inch · 16 GB · 512 GB

  • External 27 inch monitor

    Vertical orientation for code + horizontal for chat

  • iPhone — daily

    Most clients message me here.

  • Logitech Pro

    Gaming buttons, 2 device pairing

  • Keychron K2 Pro

    Brown switches, low-profile for long Lumen sessions

Editor & terminal

Where the work actually happens.

  • Cursor IDE / VS CodePinned

    Primary editor — Composer + Tab autocomplete

  • iTerm2 + zsh

    Powerlevel10k prompt, shared aliases via dotfiles

  • DataGrip

    MySQL + Postgres + Redis in one window

  • Postman

    API testing across Lumen + 3rd-party CRM webhooks

  • TablePlus, DBngin

    Local DB instances per project, no Docker bloat

  • GitHub Desktop / gh CLI

    Dual approach — desktop for diffs, gh for PRs

Sound + focus

Background noise budget.

  • Sony WH-1000XM4

    ANC for the deep-work blocks

  • Default soundtrack for deploys

  • Spotify — Coding playlist

    When lo-fi gets stale

Productivity & comms

Apps that catch the work between commits.

  • Notion

    Personal knowledge base + project roadmaps

  • Linear

    Issue tracking — fast and out of the way

  • WhatsApp

    WhatsApp for clients and teams in UAE

  • Calendly

    Booking link for consults — saves 5 emails per call

  • Gmail + Apple Mail

    Gmail for inbox, Apple Mail for unified search

Cloud & deploy

Where everything lives in production.

  • DigitalOcean Droplet

    Laravel + Next.js on the same Ubuntu box for now

  • AWS RDS + EC2 + S3

    Production CRM workloads

  • Cloudflare

    DNS + WAF + caching for rustylopez.dev

  • GitHub Actions

    CI/CD — lint, build, deploy on push to main

  • Sentry

    Error tracking on both frontend + backend

Coffee + corner

The non-tech tech that keeps things running.

  • AeroPress

    Most days · simple, fast, washable

  • Lavazza Crema e Aroma

    Honest beans, easy to find in AD

  • Standing desk converter

    30 min standing every 2 hours

Outside the editor

The other inputs that show up in how I work.

  • Gym

    PPL split, 4 days. Big believer in 'compound lifts > everything'.

  • Anime

    Frieren, Vinland Saga S2, Dandadan most recently.

  • Books

    Designing Data-Intensive Applications + The Pragmatic Programmer on rotation.

  • Podcasts

    Lex Fridman, Indie Hackers, Software Engineering Daily.

Last updated · April 2026