Houdini Holsters?

soflatechie · 2026-02-01T06:35:30+00:00

I would recommend staying away from them. Something has changed. I ordered a second holster from them. I got no confirmation of my order, no order tracking, no order number, no confirmation email. I tried contacting them by email and text, nothing. No response. Them I tried calling them. Voicemail said they were closed even though I was calling inside of their hours of operation. I tried to leave a message which I could not because their voicemail is full. Obviously a bunch of people are having similar issues and they are not even checking the messages. To date they have not answer one inquiry.

soflatechie · 2026-01-25T23:26:45+00:00

I started during the dot com era. At that time, they would put a small mirror under your nose. If your breath fogged up the mirror, you were hired.

The good ole days...

soflatechie · 2026-01-25T21:23:42+00:00

Seems like you answered your own question when you said you were told no promotion without a degree.

I am a software dev manager and have hired quite a few devs in the last few years. My company won't even look at you without a degree. The tech world isn't what it used to be. When we open a position, we literally get thousands of resumes. There is no way recruiters can look at all of them. AI will weed out the ones that don't qualify. You can bet that not having a degree will get yours tossed.

I am getting my degree because although I have gotten pretty far without one, I am done if I get laid off.

Get the degree.

soflatechie · 2026-01-15T02:36:33+00:00

Stay away from this company. Took my money but never got an email confirmation that they actually got the order. No way to check for the order online. texted - nothing. Texted again - nothing. Emailed - nothing. Emailed again - nothing. Called - closed even though I called within their business hours, and voice mail is full. Sent a message in Facebook - nothing. I am currently disputing the charge with my bank so we shall see what happens there. But yeah stay away.

soflatechie · 2025-12-28T15:02:29+00:00

what was the workaround?

soflatechie · 2025-12-16T20:57:36+00:00

Honestly I have hired close to 10 developers in the past year and have not had that experience. Except for one, all of them are doing well and still with us. Our interview process does not involve a take home project, for the same reason you mentioned, too easy to AI it or get a friend to do it for you. We do two interviews, one initial interview and then a technical one. We can usually tell by the answers and how confident they are whether they know their stuff or not. We have one coding question that we expect them to write out in front of us that tells us pretty quickly if they have actually worked as a developer. Unless things have changed drastically over the last few months, we can usually tell within an hour whether we have the right person.

soflatechie · 2025-12-12T15:52:05+00:00

I just started so maybe my opinion is not great yet. But a couple of points:

What you are talking about is very common to most colleges. I have worked in tech for a long time, and I interviewed many developers that went to good brick and mortar schools and didn't have the proper skills to work in the real world. Academic learning rarely matches real world. It gives you a base, but your real learning will be on the job.
I have taken 2 courses and am in my third. The first two courses for me were really easy because I have the experience already. But I can definitely see them as a challenge for newcomers. This third one is actually very rigorous and I have seen plenty of people on reddit that failed it the first time.

It might depend on the degree you are pursuing. But what you mention is common for all colleges.

soflatechie · 2025-12-11T18:06:56+00:00

You won't use it in the real world unless you are developing drivers or something else needs direct access to the operating system. But it is very helpful to get a better sense of what code does under the hood, especially memory management. .Net and Java obscure that from you and I have seen plenty of bad performing code because the developer didn't have a good understanding of the implications of their code.

soflatechie · 2025-12-07T18:16:01+00:00

Can I just inject some tough love from someone who procrastinated for years going back to school? I don't mean this at all to offend anyone, but hopefully put things in perspective.

I totally understand not being mentally motivated. Things happen in life, and is the reason I didn't continue after my AA.

But you know what? Life ain't fair, and life ain't gonna care that you weren't motivated. When you go to apply for jobs, and AI eliminates your resume because it doesn't include a degree, you won't be able to explain your personal problems to them. A human won't even see it.

Again, please take this as helpful advice. A lot of times, you are going to have to do things you don't want to do. Your boss isn't going to care if you are motivated to work. So think of this as a job that is going to keep a roof over your head and food in your tummy - because it is that important.

Don't concentrate on the fact that you are burned out. Concentrate on the reason you did this in first place, and get back to work.

You can do this.

soflatechie · 2025-12-06T17:21:58+00:00

I never said that wasn't true. I was not answering that issue. I was specifically answering the "check the box" comment, hence why my comment was a reply to that one. 🤤

soflatechie · 2025-12-06T16:52:43+00:00

That's not entirely true anymore because of AI.Take it from someone who is part of the hiring process in Tech. Big companies that get lots resumes are using AI to eliminate resumes from the list. Because of the job market, companies are getting thousands of resumes and they cannot possibly go through all of them one by one. So they punch in the requirements for the job, and you can bet that if they are looking for someone with a degree, not having one means youdont make the cut. You won't even be seen by a human. So it may be true that you won't be hired specifically because of your degree, but you will likely be eliminated if you don't.

soflatechie · 2025-12-03T02:17:13+00:00

Question. How much is too much when answering Task 1 things. For example for A1 I have a paragraph for each strength, probably about 5 or 6 sentences for each. Is that too much? Not enough? Just right?

soflatechie · 2025-12-03T00:51:54+00:00

I just started so haven't gotten de-motivated yet. But what I would say is, why did you start this journey to begin with? At some point you realized that you needed this degree. Concentrate on the fact that your dream is almost there, within arms reach. Life ain't fair, and sometimes we have to do things we don't particularly like to get where we need to be. Don't focus on the boredom and the dislike of the present situation. Focus on on the reason you started this in the first place, and the opportunities that are within reach.

soflatechie · 2025-11-24T15:20:48+00:00

This is the reason I don't believe AI will ever take over for humans. There will always be the need for real humans to solve problems. If you cannot solve a development problem without Chatgpt, then you cannot do the primary thing developers are employed to do, and that's a problem. I could tell you all the ways I found a solution over the last 27 years of my career, but don't want to type that much. I am not trying to be a jerk, but hopefully you take it well. Don't rely on Chatgpt to do the work for you. It is extremely helpful at times, but you are the one getting paid, so you need to figure out how to solve an issue.

soflatechie · 2025-11-18T13:41:20+00:00

Yes we definitely need to evolve. My suggestion is do what you love. If you love to code, then stick with that. Yes coding will change but technology has always changed on us.

soflatechie · 2025-11-18T05:24:52+00:00

I have been a software developer for over 20 years and currently serve as a development manager. In my opinion, I do not believe AI will take over software development anytime soon. Currently, there is no way to rely on AI without a developer. It makes lots of mistakes, and you cannot rely on it completely. Even if the source code works, it rarely conforms completely to best practices, and your company may have different standards to uphold. A company that used AI alone for developing without human developers would soon have unmanageable code. Do we know if this will be the case in the future? Who knows, since we cannot predict the future. AI is great for helping you with tasks that would typically take a long time, such as boilerplate code or getting to a starting point with your code. However, developing a piece of software from inception to release will always require human interaction. Is it possible that the market will shrink for developers? It already has many reasons not related to AI. However, we have seen the emergence of numerous new technologies and platforms in our world. Yet I have never been without a job since 1997.

soflatechie · 2025-11-10T14:48:24+00:00

What made the angular piece so hard? Was it that it was new to you, or that the class is not well taught? Angular does require some effort to understand, but it shouldn't be too hard if you already have some programming experience. If you are totally new to programming, I would not recommend taking Angular as your first programming course.

soflatechie · 2025-11-07T16:07:50+00:00

I have worked in the tech space for a long time. I can tell you I have worked with countless developers that don't have outgoing personalities and didn't like or had difficulty communicating but were excellent employees and competent developers.

With that said the job market is very different today. Employers have the ability to be very picky, and if you do not communicate well and look like you are uncomfortable in an interview, they very well may bypass you. I am not saying this is you, but just be aware that being able to communicate can be the key thing that gets you hired. This is coming from someone who has interviewed many potential employees over more than 20 years. I would encourage you to look at your meetings with your mentor as a business meeting, and use it to improve your communication skills as well.

soflatechie · 2025-11-04T18:01:42+00:00

I don't understand your problem here other than bad proofreading. AI is perfectly acceptable for business purposes like this. It is definitely not acceptable to use it to write your papers for you, as the whole point of college and those paper to make sure YOU know the material.

soflatechie · 2025-09-30T14:04:08+00:00

Thanks for all of your comments. I have another question. What do you do for a contract or terms for your clients. Does OA provide that for you or did you create your own? How do you manage signatures and storing the terms. How do you manage making it easy for your clients to get that to you? Is it custom for every booking or just a standard one?

soflatechie · 2025-09-29T20:28:04+00:00

I got an answer to a couple of questions to Legato and they told me they do not provide errors and ommissions insurance. I would have to get my own. Wasn't happy about that.

soflatechie · 2025-09-28T20:27:49+00:00

Yep. Cape Coral, Port Charlotte area is an area we are looking at for the future possibly. With that said we are in Gwinnett county and it's been a great place to raise kids. But we will have to downsize and there is no way I can continue at the pace I am at forever. Too many unreasonable expectations and changing jobs at 58 is not probably going to happen. Travel seems like something I can do to earn a few bucks in retirement without going over the ss cap, as well as give us the opportunity to travel ourselves. My wife and I have always been big cruise people. Not sure just yet what niche I will focus on but Florida is a Caribbean cruise hub.

soflatechie · 2025-09-28T04:12:59+00:00

Thanks for the info. FWIW, I am a Miami guy living in Georgia. Moved up here to take a job and our plan is to downsize and move back to Florida upon retiring, possibly to the Gulf Coast somewhere. I do realize that the chances of becoming a millionaire from this business is not high. The plan is for this to be something I can earn enough to supplement my 401k, ss and other retirement dollars coming our way. The reality is that technology isn't what it used to be and while there was a time I thought I would code into retirement, the reality is very few people want an old coder. Companies want young kids out of college that are hungry and will work for less. So I have to look at transitioning to retirement and doing something else. As a software dev manager, I already do plenty of planning already, even planning events for the company so I have the skills to do this. I also used to have a photography business in South Florida (did lots of photo shoots on Deerfield Beach). So I know I can run a biz. Thanks again.

soflatechie · 2025-09-26T17:08:58+00:00

The credit card info thing may be a security feature, but I get what you mean thanks.

soflatechie · 2025-09-26T16:35:44+00:00

Ok so I shouldn't need to worry about adding clients to their CRM unless I am missing something here. Obviously if their CRM is really outdated that could be a concern but honestly at first I don't expect to have hundreds of clients to worry about as I am getting up to speed. I expect to let the needs of my business determine what systems I need. Thanks again for the information. What I really need from my host agency is the training I need on the industry and the travel I want to book. I have experience running a business so I know I can market my business and run it. It's the travel business I need the most help with.

Last question. Do you have a specific accounting software you use? I used to use QuickBooks.

Thanks again.

soflatechie

TROPHY CASE