Jamie Smith's blog post, the first in a series, explores how to effectively monitor system metrics on personal computers using Elastic Observability. It emphasizes the importance of metrics as a part of observability, providing insights into system usage for optimization and growth planning. The post explains that system metrics, which are numeric summaries of resources used by hosts and virtual machines, offer a time-series view of system states. Smith discusses various tools for monitoring these metrics, such as Task Manager, Activity Monitor, and command-line programs like vmstat and iostat, highlighting their limitations in long-term data gathering. By collecting and correlating metrics such as CPU, memory, disk, and network activity, users can diagnose system inefficiencies and plan upgrades. The post also points out the benefits of centralizing metrics from multiple hosts to detect trends and automate alerts through machine learning. In subsequent posts, Smith promises to guide readers on centralizing infrastructure metrics using the Elastic Stack to enhance scalability and monitoring precision.