{"id":46,"date":"2007-01-03T16:56:49","date_gmt":"2007-01-03T21:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/creator\/2007\/01\/03\/46\/"},"modified":"2007-01-03T16:56:49","modified_gmt":"2007-01-03T21:56:49","slug":"46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2007\/01\/03\/46\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday Maria and I looked at the best apartment in the world, and today she applied for the lease; assuming she gets it, we&#8217;ll be moving in mid-February, and I will probably just be leaving my stuff in boxes in anticipation of leaving Kentucky.  My very, very tentative plans for the move are to buy my brother&#8217;s truck for the transportation involved and drive to wherever I&#8217;m going sometime between February and April.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you paying attention:  yes, this means I&#8217;m going to get my driver&#8217;s license.<\/p>\n<p>There really isn&#8217;t a better time in my life to do this.  Everything I need to do my job fits in a backpack, and I can work from any coffee shop in the country.  All that&#8217;s missing is a destination.<\/p>\n<p>Excluding New York City and the South in general, where should I move?  I want to live in a metropolitan area with a healthy tech sector.  Also, truck or no truck, I want somewhere with good public transportation.  Chicago (sorry, Flora) and St. Louis don&#8217;t really interest me; all the places I&#8217;ve traditionally talked about are coastal, but it&#8217;s not like I surf.  Said places:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Boston:<\/b>  I understand there is neat stuff here, and also they put all the cars underground.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  I&#8217;ve never been there and I might dislike it for the same reasons I dislike New York (cold, dark, smells bad, cost of living).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>Providence:<\/b>  I&#8217;ve been there and I liked it a lot.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  Not really a rising-star tech city, and rumor has it the sun sets for six months at a time.  Iffy public transit (but highly walkable).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>San Francisco Bay Area:<\/b>  Been there and liked it too.  Kind of the standard to which I compare all other potential destinations.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  I would be a twentysomething male web developer living in the SF Bay Area.  Also, insane rent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>Seattle:<\/b>  High scores in tech and coffee-shop availability.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  <i>See<\/i> SF Bay Area.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>Portland:<\/b>  Apparently the place where kids move these days.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  <i>See<\/i> Boston.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>Hilo or Honolulu:<\/b>  Ian might be in Hilo in August, plus, y&#8217;know, <i>Hawaii.<\/i>\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  This is a stupid idea.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>Greensboro or Raleigh-Durham:<\/b>  The model of a rising tech area; driving distance from Jon and Amanda.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  Jon and Amanda might be moving, and more importantly, this defeats the whole point of getting out of the South.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>San Diego:<\/b>  I&#8217;ve been there and I liked it; solid tech score; not wet, dark or smelly; people can crash my place for Comic Con.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside:  Poor public transit.  Would probably be considered outcast for weird skin patterns that emerge when I tan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><b>London:<\/b>  I have beautiful illusions of this place.\n<ul>\n<li>Downside: This isn&#8217;t actually a possibility.  I&#8217;m pretty sure I cannot legally work there, or afford to live there under a weak dollar.  Also I&#8217;m enjoying those illusions and would dislike having them crushed.  Consider all this repeated for Sydney and Toronto.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The pachyderm in the pantry is that except for the unlikely choices (North Carolina, London, possibly Hawaii), I have no friends in any of these places, and I am spectacularly bad at meeting new people.  All of my current friends were obtained through academic programs with enforced social contact or Internet.  So, friends on Internet:  where should I move?<\/p>\n<p><b>Update 1038<\/b> hrs:  Maria got the apartment!  Who wants to give me driving lessons?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to everybody who has commented or emailed with advice and information.  You guys are the best Internet ever!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday Maria and I looked at the best apartment in the world, and today she applied for the lease; assuming she gets it, we&#8217;ll be moving in mid-February, and I will probably just be leaving my stuff in boxes in anticipation of leaving Kentucky. My very, very tentative plans for the move are to buy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,46,47,19,6,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california","category-ian","category-jon-and-amanda","category-mild-lunacy","category-real-jobs","category-travel-and-acronyms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}