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How to fix: Jabra Elite 75T volume too low / decreasing

Problem: Recently I faced the issue with my Jabra Elite InEars that while I was using them, the volume started to continually decrease until I had to max out the volume on the phone. Yet the sound was still barely loud enough to hear it. After not using them for a while, sound was okay again (still quiet but better) until volume started to decrease again while using.

The internet is FULL of advice about Bluetooth settings, resetting the phone, entering developer mode etc. Yet it was ways easier.

How to Exclude OpenAI GPTBot from future crawling a website

In order to tell OpenAI to stop crawling a website and thus not use the content for training GPT, OpenAI now supports to disallow GPTBot from accessing your site.

The Information can be found on the GPTBot – OpenAI API website:

Completely disallow GPTBot:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Allow/disallow certain parts of a website:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /directory-1/
Disallow: /directory-2/

For WordPress sites, I can recommend the Virtual Robots.txt – plugin.

How to fix: Jabra Elite 75T different volume of in-Ear headphones

I often just use one of the in-ears of my Jabra 75T. Recently I figured out that when I use both in-ears headphones, the right one was significantly louder than the left one. After a quick hearing test, I was convinced that it is not a problem with my hearing but with one of the headphones.

After some back and forth, the easiest solution was:
Simply hard reset the headphones in 2 simple steps.
If resetting does NOT solve the issue permanently: Try cleaning a specific part!

An advantage of remote interviews

There have been plenty of articles and comments about the (dis)advantages of home office vs in-office scenarios over the past two years. One critical aspect of home-office is definitely about creating a personal relationship with people that you never meet in person.

One situation where a personal relationship is quite important is an interview with candidates (be it internal or external). Besides the technical expertise you also want to know whether or not the candidate is a fit for the team. In the past 2+ years, we interviewed dozens of people for positions in the team. I say “we” because we usually are 2-3 internals holding different positions in the team (dev, ops, product owner, …) interviewing the new candidate. And in the past 2+ years we did all those interviews remotely via video-conferencing.

My critical view about “the Metaverse”

Recently the term “Metaverse” is across like in every IT related news. Noone really knows what it is but it seems to be the hot shit you have to be into! And it seems to be THE ultimate solution for so many odd problems AND a totally new business market!

The “metaverse” topic has followed me now a couple of months and I had a couple of discussions already about my critical view about the topic. And if it was worth discussing so often – it might be worth writing it down as well. 😀

How to change File Creation time using Windows Powershell

I don’t want to blame the time shift 2x a year. At least as long as I do not forget to change the time on my camera as well! As I am doing most of my photography on hikes and geo tag them afterwards, It makes quite a difference if the file creation time is right or wrong.

This year I forgot to change it on the camera and needed to bulk-change the file time later. Luckily this is pretty easy using Windows Powershell and the Windows PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment):

$files = Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\[....]\*.arw"
foreach ($f in $files){
    $d1 = [System.IO.File]::GetCreationTime($f.FullName)
    $d2 = $d1.addHours(1)
	[System.IO.File]::SetCreationTime($f.FullName, $d2)
    echo $d1 
    echo $d2
    echo ---
}

Just copy it into the ISE, execute, done.

How to make efficient status meetings

Do you know these horrible status meetings? Every week, every two weeks or – when it is critical – 2x a week? Especially with multiple members? And you never know whether it’s important to go there or not? But you need to go there because there might be a relevant information?

The myth: “If there’s nothing to say, we can quickly close the meeting after 5min”. Seriously – I’ve not seen this happen very often. It quickly drifts into a common chitchat or Q&A. Don’t get me wrong: socializing is important – but a status meeting isn’t a socializing event.

Do not make rules that you cannot control or enforce

I have been repeating this sentence more often than I’d like recently. But if the COID-19 time has taught me one thing very impressively, it is:

Rule 1: Forget rules which you cannot control or enforce
(Alternatively: “Do not hope for the sanity of your colleagues / fellows / …”)

Many of the COVID measures would certainly not have been necessary if “we all” had behaved reasonably. One could discuss the term “reasonable” right away. But “reasonable” unfortunately depends on personal goals. If the personal goals diverge, the opinion about “reasonable behavior” diverges as well. And suddenly “we all” do not have a common sense of what “reasonable behaviour” is. This discrepancy is then what is called a “conflict.”

The real challenge of HomeOffice for companies

Many companies and executives thought COVID-19 and 100% HomeOffice would be a real challenge. Phew seems a lot of companies survived the Home-Office challenge! Companies have learnt that the business can continue. Employees have learnt that HomeOffice can work.

This was challenge 1: the technical challenge.

But now as companies slowly do not have to do HomeOffice anymore … now we will see what our bosses, executives and companies really think. How much they have really learned. How much trust there really is.

Now comes challenge 2: the people challenge.

The challenge might now be to keep people when a leader (or worse: a company culture) values presence (a.k.a counting sheep) over results – but employees don’t …

I’ll just stay at home and stay productive.

Don’t just ask for Feedback and Improvements

“Every employee should feel encouraged to give feedback and contribute ideas for improvement!” Who has heard this before? Probably everyone!

My (slightly provocative) opinion: “The effect was probably close to zero. So Forget it and don’t do such a shout out!”. Unless you want nothing or barely anything to change. Then do a big shout-out and send people back to work! Great show – with no effect! Of course, I made the mistake myself and didn’t notice for quite a while (years, actually). Every now and then an idea or suggestion came along (or I had one myself) and we were proud of the improvement. At some point between Retros and PostMortems I got the point: “It needs the right framework!”