The end of the year is approaching and another month is over. With the end of October and today’s time change - which I had briefly forgotten this morning for inexplicable reasons - but already comes a bit of the winter feeling. The last weeks it was sometimes unusually warm, but now the cold season is just around the corner.
Since my girlfriend has started into the new semester and thus lives in her university town again, I had to turn to new activities besides work. This month it was on the one hand the topic of smart home, on the other hand politics.
As for Smart Home, after reviving my Raspberry Pi 4 at the end of September, I have now installed a program called “Home Assistant”. I also bought some hardware that now allows me to measure temperature, humidity and air pressure inside and outside, and smart sockets that can be switched on and off via Home Assistant, and some of which can also directly measure power consumption. A short time later, however, I retired my Raspberry Pi again and upgraded my home server instead and now use it for smart home control, among other things.
As for politics, earlier this month my application to join the Green Party was allowed (🇩🇪). The first event I attended, however, was more of an embarrassment. It was a video conference to discuss which messenger should be used in the future for exchanges in the regional party. However, there were technical problems with my Bluetooth headset. In the end, the solution was an updating a few drivers on my computer and so I was able to participate in my second event, an online new member meeting of the Green Youth in Lower Saxony, without embarrassing myself. I think the party offers me the opportunity to exchange ideas with people who have politically very similar views as I do. Maybe it will help me to find better and more convincing arguments for my points of view.
Apart from that, the month also consisted of work: There were both rather boring phases with many meetings, tough and not really exciting tasks, but especially towards the end of the month there were also days and weeks where I was able to advance even larger tasks significantly.