It’s time again for a new monthly review. Let’s see what I was up to in September.

Since I had a longer Internet outage last month, after my vacation I started to take measures so that I am no longer so limited in the future in case of a DSL outage. I booked an additional option (🇩🇪) with my Internet provider so that I can simply continue surfing via LTE in the event of a DSL outage. What’s more, this extra bandwidth can be used to make my Internet a bit faster. During a first DSL outage, which occurred after a short power interruption, this solution already helped.

This month I tried to write longer texts more often again. I programmed less on the blog software and blogged more instead. For example about writing as self-therapy, programming or my thoughts about the federal election (🇩🇪).

Speaking of the federal election: This month I went to vote twice and got to make quite a few crosses. Election of the district council, the city council and the Lord Mayor, and finally Lord Mayor runoff election and federal election. Overall, September was very much about politics. Politics was actually the constant topic of discussion, all online news was (and still is) full of politics, a few times I also watched politics shows on TV. Am I glad that this will soon be over, when hopefully a coalition will be found quickly.

But one more politics point: I have applied for membership at the district association of the Greens Party in Braunschweig. I have the impression that this is the only larger party that actually takes a look at the future and also thinks about the environment and the next generations. Let’s see if they will even accept my joining at the next general meeting. From joining I hope to be allowed to participate in future member votes. I am not sure yet whether I want to actively participate in any working groups.

In addition to all the politics, I have also been busy with technology. I found a new use for my Raspberry Pi 4. First I gave it a new case with better cooling and finally I installed Tailscale to access my home network from anywhere and also Pi-Hole and later AdGuard Home to filter DNS requests on the home network and block ads. This works great! Currently, about 10 to 20 percent of DNS queries are filtered out.

For two forenoons this month, I worked out of the office because a power interruption was announced at home. It was a bit of an unusual experience, but it showed me that I will miss my home office, at least in terms of equipment, should work from the office be called for again at some point. But that will still take a while, after all, home office has been extended until the end of the year.

Let’s see what October brings…