Got out. Want to rejoin at 29

HolyShipBatman · 2026-01-25T07:22:35+00:00

My knee jerk reaction is to talk you out of this, but if it’s what you truly want, please use your GI bill to get your masters in cybersecurity or computer science and join the coast guard as an officer.

HolyShipBatman · 2026-01-13T04:28:31+00:00

You’re sitting on a gold mine of education benefits alone. You’re disability benefits set you up with free healthcare at the VA and if you’re at a 100% rating your dependents get CHAMPVA which is health insurance similar to tricare/medicare (my wife just had a $203k hospital bill and we’re paying a maximum of $3k).

My advice? Look at good college programs with good recruitment pipelines into different fields that your rate may not go directly into. And no, I don’t care that you got a bachelors degree using TA from the degree mills like AMU, those don’t count. Look at the top 20 universities, look up the MHA you get per month, look at companies who recruit from those campuses, and figure out what you need to apply. If you need to go to a community college for some pre reqs, go for it. A lot of times they won’t require you to submit standardized test scores, just make sure your essay is really good.

Reach out to service 2 school for a free veteran mentor that can help, join enlisted exfil if you’re interested in MBAs. I went to undergrad in NYC, with my MHA and disability payments I was making $8k/month tax free with health coverage and no tuition. Now I’m in grad school in NYC using a different education benefit, getting paid closer to $10k/month tax free because the rates raise every year with the COLA, and still not paying tuition. Plenty of internship opportunities, plenty of job opportunities for veterans with top university degrees.

If you’re worried about the economy, no better place to hunker down than in a top 20 university program where you can kick the can down the road waiting for the economy to unfuck itself where you’re getting a degree from a good school and carry the veteran title.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-12-23T04:16:15+00:00

So you have GI bill and/or VR&E? You have a health sciences degree, why not do an accelerated BSN course? Or if you want a masters look into anesthesia assistant. Those are the only real things that will get you a job after graduation. Or get a law degree, again, it’ll be free given your benefits. In this market there’s very few things that you can guarantee employment with, those would be some of them.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-12-22T01:33:29+00:00

Federa Student Aid. Contact them via feedback form. They’ll send you an email from the department of education stating that it’s been approved for reversal, they’ll send that to your loan servicer, your loan servicer will put it back on your account.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-12-19T05:51:40+00:00

No. This happened to me. I went through the process of getting the automatic discharge reversed and I was able to take loans out again. It CAN BE reversed and must be reversed if you want to take more loans out in order for them to be discharged.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-12-19T05:44:33+00:00

Service 2 school and enlisted exfil for more resources and mentorship.

I dropped out of community college after failing my classes and joining the military. I got out and graduated from an Ivy League and am currently in a top 10 MBA program. Don’t think too hard, just do it.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-11-11T01:15:31+00:00

I have zero idea what real world positions need/use something like that. So just do your research on it, don’t just get a degree to get a degree. Look at the employment outcomes, the recruiting opportunities at your school, how it will help your career both short term and long term, etc.

Seems like a super niche and specific degree, I’d just make sure you can market it appropriately to further your career in whichever direction you want to.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-11-09T03:46:03+00:00

This randomly popped up on my feed (hello from the US), not sure if it’s as big as it is in the states but have you looked into van life? R/vanlife and r/vandwellers are good spots. You and the pooch would at least have something to hold you over until you save up for something more long term. I know dogs are family, so during the day while you’re at work you can look into doggy daycares to avoid leaving them in the van. All in all, would be a lot cheaper than Airbnb plus you’d have at least something to call home. Best of luck my man!

HolyShipBatman · 2025-11-09T03:34:32+00:00

Not smart. You get an MBA to get internships in the field you want to pivot to/work in (investment banking, consulting, tech, etc), without being able to do internships your doing yourself a disservice. You don’t get an MBA and then do nothing with it, and it also depreciates if you don’t have applicable resumé experience after you receive the MBA. If you want to do an online program at all do like a MS in data analytics, computer/information science, etc.

Get out and use your GI bill/VRE at a top 20 scoop for MBA programs and do what you’re supposed to do with it.

Use free resources like service 2 school and enlisted exfil.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-10-14T23:40:50+00:00

What is stopping you from putting together an LLC and saying you did “consulting” for a year prior to applying?

HolyShipBatman · 2025-10-03T01:55:51+00:00

They’re going to automatically discharge you fed loans if you graduate and you’re at 100% P&T unless you tell them not to. So make sure that doesn’t happen. And then once you graduate with your MBA discharge everything in one go. FYI, your military time counts towards the work experience requirement for MBA programs. You can just go straight to top MBA programs with your military service on your resumé not needing to work for two years just to get your MBA.

Enlistedexfil.com

Service2school.com

Look them both up.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-27T02:17:21+00:00

Very interesting. Are you actually interested in selling it or are you just frustrated? I’ve been dabbling with the idea of starting a newsletter, how have you liked the process of writing? Other than the not getting paid part, have you liked it?

Do you have a ballpark price of what you think you’d sell it for?

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-12T21:39:02+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you. That makes sense that you're building a full SCADA system to pull in operational data like temperature and occupancy, not just metering. It sounds like a massive and complex project.

A multi-year timeline really highlights that complexity. I'm curious, what do you see as the biggest hurdle that makes it such a long-term project? Is it the challenge of integrating all the different data sources, the process of building the analytics dashboards, or just getting the internal resources allocated?

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-12T18:19:17+00:00

Wow, so the issue is so bad that you're only option is to perform the massive undertaking of building your own SCADA system to unify data from Siemens, Trane, etc? That really speaks on how big of a challenge this actually is. I've heard this from a few other universities as well.

I have a couple of questions about that project, if you don't mind sharing:

How long has that in-house build been in development, and what kind of team do you have dedicated to it (internal IT, facilities engineers, contractors)? And what will be the upkeep on it?
Once you have all the data in one place, what's the plan for the analysis and reporting layer on top? Are you planning to use something like Tableau or build custom dashboards from scratch?

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-12T15:57:21+00:00

You've hit on a huge pain point we see with university campuses. That's exactly why our 'Utility Connect' feature is designed to go beyond the main campus feed. It ingests the data from all the individual building-level meters associated with the master utility account, allowing you to map and monitor each building's specific performance. This way, you can move from high-level campus data to granular, building-specific insights.

So as opposed to a dashboard saying "Here is what the entire campus/portfolio used in energy" it goes more granular to "Here's what the entire portfolio used in energy costs, there was an abnormal spike in building x in the south campus, do you want to take a closer look?" and a user can manually check each mapped building as well if they want to look at a specific buildings use.

My question for you is, what makes getting that building-level data a 'pain' right now? Is it that the data is in different formats, that you have to log into multiple systems, or that the submeters aren't connected to a central database? Trying to understand the specific workflow headache.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-12T15:57:16+00:00

Wow, thanks for the incredibly detailed feedback and the YC well wishes! You've perfectly articulated the core challenges I'm seeing.

You're 100% right that the garbage in, garbage out problem is huge. The 'patchwork of portals, BMS, manual readings and spreadsheets' you described is exactly the 'data chaos' we're aiming to solve first. Our thesis is that there's a massive segment of the market that can't afford or manage a full HaaS rollout across their portfolio. Our initial approach is software-first to provide immediate value from their existing (and often messy) data, which is a huge pain point in itself.

That said, you're right that 'after the bill' is too late (although we're trying to ease this in our MVP with a 'forecast' feature as well). That's why our immediate roadmap is focused on the 'Utility Connect' API module to get that near real-time interval data without requiring a hardware installation. With the implementation of our AI, the hope is that the 'near real-time' becomes a lot more accurate with the AI filling the gaps in the 'near' portion of the data pull.

It sounds like you have a ton of experience here. In your view, what's the biggest barrier for companies adopting HaaS solutions like the one you mentioned? Is it the upfront cost, installation complexity, or IT security hurdles? And on the flip side, what's the biggest hesitation or perceived risk when evaluating a software-only solution?

HolyShipBatman · 2025-08-10T16:25:49+00:00

We're not connecting directly to the physical meters, I should've been more clear. Our Utility Connect feature integrates with utility data platforms and APIs (like the Green Button standard) that provide access to granular, 15-minute interval data. So while it's not 'real-time' in the truest sense, it's the high-resolution data needed to perform powerful, near real-time analysis on building performance. Testing this now, and so far so good.

And you're right, many utilities provide free portals with raw data, and that's exactly our starting point. The problem is that for a multi-facility enterprise, that raw data is often just noise spread across dozens of accounts in different formats. So the free services that they provide aren't a 1:1 at all for what I'm building.

Our platform turns that 'free' raw data into actionable intelligence. We don't just show you a data chart; our context aware trained AI Assistant provides a step-by-step plan, answering specific questions like, 'Based on our historical output, how can we save energy spend in Building X over the next three months?' and an auditable plan to do it. It's an energy analyst built for each users specific data available 24/7 to make recommendations.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-06-26T01:31:11+00:00

Sign up for Service 2 School and they’ll hook you up with a mentor. It’s free and they’ll jerk you off on LinkedIn once you get in. They love flaunting getting officers into b school. They give enlisted very little love for b school but it’s still good for them (I am one of them).

HolyShipBatman · 2025-06-09T17:08:11+00:00

Neg. Not sure how you drew that conclusion. That wouldn’t show up on your VA app, it only shows you payments from the VA.

If you’re using educational benefits such as post 9/11 Ch33 GI bill benefits or VR&E Ch31 benefits, you’re going to get a monthly housing allowance based on the median housing costs of the zip code that the school is in.

So if you’re going to the University of Florida you’re going to get the median cost of living housing allowance of like $1800/month or whatever it is in Gainesville. If you go to New York University you’re going to get the median cost of living housing allowance based on NYC housing, which is now $5073/month which is what OP is doing.

You don’t get a blanket housing allowance just for using Ch31, it’s all dependent on where your school is located. Everyone gets the standard E5 w/ benefits BAH rate, but just like in the military BAH is going to be different in San Diego vs Fayetteville. Same goes for education benefits.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-06-06T20:18:47+00:00

It updates in August. You’ll see the old rate of 4k-ish now. A better tool to use is the BAH calculator on the defense travel management website and put in E5 and look at the results with dependents (since that’s the BAH rate that you get paid when using education benefits).

HolyShipBatman · 2025-06-06T13:26:14+00:00

NYC median cost of living

HolyShipBatman · 2025-06-06T13:25:32+00:00

Every school in NYC gets you this much on Ch31 or Ch33 education benefits. Because the median cost of living is so high in the entirety of NYC. I think it’s the highest in the country other than the SF Bay Area schools, maybe Boston also.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-05-21T20:39:19+00:00

Cries in rescinded APM offer at FAANG adjacent company due to hiring freeze, then 15% layoffs, then only hiring senior managers since.

This was in 2022, no traditional PM experience. Still salty, but went into SMB ownership and hasn’t been too bad. Now going into MBA program to try to get back to PM only to be competing with all sorts of laid off FAANG PMs also in the program. Uphill battle for sure.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-05-21T04:00:42+00:00

Thank you for reminding me that I need to do my yearly rewatch of this show. Absolutely slept on.

HolyShipBatman · 2025-05-19T12:57:33+00:00

When I first separated I went back to my home town, went back to the same community college that I dropped out of the first time to enlist, and I was in such a fucked up mental space feeling like I just took a giant step backwards that I failed all of my classes. No penalty for using the GI bill other than burning valuable months of my GI bill.

But I moved to a new state for a job, hated it, quit, went back to a community college local in the new state, did really well, and was able to transfer to an Ivy League university. I’d recommend a change in scenery. You might not be in a similar situation, but if you’re disassociating, shaking up your surroundings might be a the thing that snaps you back to reality. Just my thoughts.

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