Well, it's been a few days since I came down to this dark and lonely hole.

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I have done much technically for my infrastructure in those past days, with the
major achievements beings:

1. finally getting rid once and for all on the annoyance of dealing with google
contacts in the systematic process of escaping big tech. I set up vdirsyncer on
my debian server and installed DAVx5 on my grapheneOS running phone over
wireguard (I dont' expose many services publically, if they're not meant for
public use). I had to switch from using abook to using khard to comply with
vcard standards. 

2. as I went about it I also set up radicale for connecting my devices with
calendar and tasks. On desktop I use calcurse for both calendar and tasks and
they can be connected via calDAV. On android I sync it to fossify calendar and
tasks.org. So far happy with it. 

Frankly, I don't know if there's any service now that I use google/miscroslop
for in my life. Maps used to be the thing but I decided some months ago to just
stick with organic maps and it has been working alright for me.

3. the happiest achievement was to run my own mailserver, as everybody told me
not to do. I have a stable IP and even though my ISP told me they won't open
port 25 for me I found that it actually works regardless. They would not change
PTR (important for deliverability to big tech server) to my mail domain so I got
reading and found out that I can use a company that acts as a relay for my
server. So the mail goes: my server --> their relay --> destination server.
Since they have a good reputation my mail so far hasn't landed in spam on google
or microslop or proton servers. They allow for 300 mails/day for free.  I almost
never write more than 5 a day. Good so far. I was able to use that in my
self-hosted sevices for things like password resets or invites, etc.  So my own
domain and own mail server. Happy boy.

And many many other things. But cannot write about everything as I would rather
be tinkering now.

PS Just found Androidcrypt on fdroid store. Will see how that works.  It seems
to be something that was missing in my arsenal. Maybe I can use it with a note
taking app. I am familiar with veracrypt and used it before moving to LUKS.
Probably don't need it much, but no harm in looking.