blog.n3xus.one

The best job interview I ever had

2026-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

A long time ago</h2>
Yesterday, I read Tony Olivero’s blog post</a>, which had been posted on Hacker News. I could relate to his feelings deeply, as I had experienced something similar myself over a decade ago. I had just returned from a surgery that had become necessary as part of my cancer treatment. During the procedure, lymph nodes that appeared suspicious were removed.</p>
Ultimately, everything turned out well; however, the job interviews themselves were an absolute chaotic mess. While in Germany one is not legally obligated to lay all one’s cards on the table, at that time I held a temporary disability certificate. This status entails certain tax benefits as well as additional vacation entitlement. Therefore, in the interest of ensuring an honest start, I decided to inform my potential new employer about my situation right from the outset.</p>
Most companies showed very little empathy in their response, asking only questions such as: “What does this mean for the company?” or “How much additional downtime can we expect as a result?” It is easy to imagine that no one wants to take on such a risk—after all, the employer is required to continue paying the employee’s salary for the first six weeks of sick leave before the health insurance provider steps in. And this was despite the fact that, at that time, I had already been considered cancer-free for several years.</p>

The Job Interview That Changed Everything</h2>
During this period, a former colleague called me and asked if I would be available for a position in 2nd-level support. I agreed and sent over my CV. After some time—I was still in the hospital at that point—the HR department got in touch with me and proposed a date for an interview. Since I was unable to appear in person, I explained my current whereabouts to them and asked for a little time to recover first. To my surprise, they were open to this suggestion, and we scheduled a meeting for two or three weeks later.</p>
When the day of the interview arrived, my abdominal incision was still closed with surgical staples; nevertheless, I was determined to keep the appointment. Sitting for extended periods was anything but comfortable, yet the conversation went very well. After about 90 minutes—during which we discussed technical topics and my professional background—my interviewers asked if I had any final remarks. I hesitated for a moment – but I had a good feeling about it. So, I shared my medical history with them and explained the current situation: that I had recently undergone surgery but was now considered cancer-free.</p>
Their reaction exceeded all my expectations. All three interviewers—my future supervisor and two representatives from Human Resources—exchanged meaningful glances and then thanked me for the trust I had placed in the company. I was assured that this was absolutely no problem, and they expressed their gratitude for my openness. It wasn't merely a professional acknowledgment offered out of politeness; it felt sincere and genuine. They asked me to allow about two to three weeks for the decision-making process to conclude. My future boss then invited me to meet my prospective team and treated me to a cup of coffee. Afterward, he walked me down to the entrance and asked me to call him immediately if I were to receive any other promising job offers.</p>
A few weeks later, I received the contract documents and started my new job. 🚀</p>

bluply for bluOS

2026-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Backstory</h2>
During my current build of a F.A.S.T. audio speaker, which consists of Tang Band W4-1879 full range drivers and Scan Speak Woofers driven by a Hypex plate amp, I found a fitting solution for my requirements.</p>
The setup needs a dedicated pre-amp and I always wanted to have a bluesound option with a dedicated streamer and the possibility to manage all other players and sources like tv and local audio data.</p>
Therefor I went with the Node Icon</strong>. Overall we had a rough start since I couldn't locate it via app on the network (mDNS / Bonjour) and the first firmware update was also breaking, but after another attempt it fixed itself.</p>
To my complete surprise linux support for this hardware is mostly lacking. There is a an option to make use of the BluOS Controller on Linux, since it's Electron based, but I really like to have the player in the cli.</p>

Birth of bluply</h2>
bluply browsing a local BluOS playlist</p> </caption> </section>
After some considerations I went with the base idea of a ncmpcpp-like tool to open claw and asked it to vibe-code a client for this requirement. There is an api available on bluOS and and it's pretty well described, so I created a repo on my gitlab and went for the first shot.</p>
From some minor issues it was already pretty good. It needed some improvements and polishing, but over the past couple days it looks not that bad and does the job already really good. Since I'm mostly into local data, I don't know how it behaves with Tidal or Deezer for example, but maybe I take care of that as well.</p>
https://git.n3xus.one/seb/bluply</a> 🚀</p>

Getting laid off

2026-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Background</h2>
15 years ago I started at a software company of a fortune 500 corpo. In the beginning I did some pretty boring service tasks. Over time I dug deeper and deeper into more technical stuff. Worked on cloud topics, lived the DevOps life and came back to some legacy application where I have deep domain knowhow.</p>
They asked me to re-join due to the fact that they wanted a major refactor of the whole application. Since we had a real bumpy start and some of our old world monolith was shipped to the cloud to have a second life as micro service.</p>
I did what I like and dealt with all the disturbances which happened alot. So much that we got more management attention than we possibly wanted.</p>
We shaped some simple process and established teams which consisted of the most experienced members of the services. We were honest and trustful which was our recipe to get shit done before it hit the fan. This meant also doing sometimes some pretty wild stuff on the live systems to keep things going. We got better and better and over time we made sure that almost no critical issues appeared anymore, at least from the inside.</p>
Today</h2>
Two days ago we got info from our top management that we should prepare for an urgent organisational change. A mandatory meeting was set up and we have to attend. Most of us work from remote, so we were aware that it has to be important.</p>
In the beginning we were gossiping that the final merge with the corp will be done and therefor our company will be vanishing. Oh boy how wrong we were. One day before the meeting I heard rumors that they will shut down the whole department. I thought it was crazy due to the fact we had running contracts and the application we serve is a multibillion one.</p>
Then the day of the meeting came it was all clear within 2 minutes. This long it took to make sure that the whole company will be shut down and everybody will be laid off within the next 12 - 18 months. I wasn't mourning in the first place, I wasn't shocked either. I just thought how crazy it is to throw such amount of experience under the bus.</p>
They explained that all this stuff we did and still do can be transferred near or offshore within this amount of time. It's a bummer since even our contractors know that this is complete madness, but their hands are bound, since we can't get on board due to the worker council and their own policy to decrease the head count on their departments.</p>
So everything will go into ashes. Unnecessarily and for a price tag which is under the impression of numbers of the whole service and transformation process in the range of peanuts.</p>
Today I heard that top management will not revoke the decision, since this was done in allignment with the board members. It's not even frustrating. It's just waste of time and money. 🚀</p>

If you can open it, you own it

2026-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Background</h2>
About 5 years ago we renovated our complete house. During that time we spend a decent amount of money on a number of shellys to drive our roller shutter. Unfortunately the have a design flaw which let them die over time. Since I didn't like to pay another 25 Euros per unit, I decided to solve it the maker way.</p>
Investigation</h2>
First of all I spend some time to find out what the root cause of the issue is. Fortunately it's relatively easy to find the specified information since it happens alot on the first generation of the 2.5pm model. A capacitor relevant to the voltage control is failing due to the temperature and build quality.</p>
Findings</h2>
Since the panasonic capacitor counterparts of this model are only about 17ct each, I decided to go for these. Boards are also recommending them, since the voltage is specified a bit higher, which goes also for the build quality.</p>

The workdesk with the shelly board</p> </caption> </section>
Getting to work</h2>
The only downer was my lack of having a well working desoldering tool. I went for a Yihua 948D-I, which, after the first use, was a no-brainer. 25 years ago, during my vocational school period, I was really into soldering. We had Weller tools and they were great soldering stations. I didn't want to spend so much on it, so it was also one from Yihua. It's fairly good enough and has plenty of functions I will never make use off.</p>

Shelly with old and new capacitors</p> </caption> </section>
Summary</h2>
In the end it was a real rewarding experience. I renewed my soldering experience and also got my shellys to work again. Every one of these little guys were booting up successfully after changing their run down capacitors. Furthermore they do their service on my home assistant instance without any issues. 🚀</p>

About

2026-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Hey this is me. Devops engineer by day, homelabber by night.</p>