How about some positivity? Post why your life is great!
This a good idea. I guess I’ll go.

Summer vacation. Isn’t that enough? Oh, and I’ve been working on my Spanish too, and July 4th is coming up. But I haven’t been working much on DR1VE, unfortunately...

Anyway, great topic idea, hopefully this will introduce some much-needed positivity into the site and help people appreciate the good in their lives.
I like this idea, even though I never read the other thread (would rather read this one instead Wink).

I've been living in a great house and great neighborhood for just over a year and we're still here, and I'm getting to take it easy and enjoy summer and Independence Day in the US, along with several fun activities.
Awesome,

The summer is great. Depending on where you are no more winter coats.

Of course I am excited for the fourth of July and I will be watching fireworks.
Getting laid off at the end of the month.

The office I manage has shrunk over the last 12-18 months so my services as a full time office manager are no longer required. There was a high level decision to hire in locations that was closer to the talent (e.g. San Francisco) and also to open and hire internationally and over the last 18 months my office has shrunk from 80 to 20 employees while the other USA offices are moving into larger spaces and our international office is moving for the second time in 3 months.

Normally this a "Darn, this sucks" type of scenario but I realized that it's really a blessing in disguise. It's been my dream for the last 10 years to move out of the San Francisco Bay Area; it started when I worked retail when I realized I could transfer to another store. Not that I was heavily considering a move then but I eventually moved onto another job where I once again could transfer to other locations and I started to get more serious; mostly because it paid more and I could finally afford this dream.

Life continued and I eventually got a proper career and figured I'd build experience in this career and use that to apply elsewhere. My goal was around 2-3 years as I figured that was a decent stint to get experience. But alas, I didn't get all the experience I wanted as my office shrunk instead of grew. I still managed quite a few vendor contracts and roles but there's still some direct experiences I missed out on.

Now that I no longer have excuse to stay in the Bay Area, I'm going to leave. I may not be super young anymore but I've got a great foundation to set out on.

I told my friends when I visited Minnesota about a month ago and they encouraged me to head out their way. I looked at neighborhoods and I even applied for a job out here -- am hoping to hear back on the second round of interviews. It won't be easy,for a Sunny California boy to move to the mid-west, the Winters are especially rough. Even so, my game plan is to get a quaint job out there and enjoy life.

I always ensure I have a great work-life balance but in my current environment, I still feel like a slave to my work. Even though I shifted my hours to a 6:30a to 3p (rather than an 9-5) I drive 90 minute round trip every day to go to a job 17 miles away; 25 minutes in the morning and about 60 minutes on the way home. I can't really go anywhere from 4-7pm because it'll take me 2 hours for a round trip. Figure 45 minutes there, 30 minutes to shop, and another 45 mins to get home. And it's not even a far trip to the shopping center. It's just what happens when you have 5M+ people all on the road going home at the end of the work day. Granted these folks are all over the bay and not just in my surrounding neighborhoods, with ~1M in my city, ~1M in each of the neighboring cities and equally more a little further out, it's pretty easy to imagine all these folks need to clog the roads to get home from the very few big working cities such as Mountain View and San Francisco. Also, the Bay Area doesn't have a great public transit system like NYC, Seattle, and other locations. Mostly has to do with the 10+ cities that need to work together to make it happen whereas NYC & Seattle are just one city. That said, San Francisco has a great transit system it's just not always easy for a resident who lives in another city to get there for work.

During my time in the small mid-west town, I encountered no traffic. I went out at 8am no problem, and went places at 5pm no problem. There was no "we gotta beat the rush" attitude and everything was so carefree. But that also means there's a lack of jobs so that's no fun. I'm hoping to secure a job and to start leaning on my hobbies a bit more, such as photo & video, and turn that into a proper side business.

My goal is to move out there, rent for about 6 months then find a house to buy. Get a 15 year mortgage and with my downpayment it'll be about the same as my rent. Get married and by the time I'm 45-50yo, the house will be paid off and I can retire early then I can vacation and have little to worry about.

I already feel really happy about this. I do have some reservations, such as moving before I have a job and whether or not I'll truly enjoy it. I've never done anything this drastic in my life and that alone is intimidating, but I'm ready for it. There's no telling what the future holds but I know I don't want a future in the Bay Area, and I have control of that. I've been planning the road trip ever since, I want to drive there in 5 days but the closer we get to Winter I may just fly out there and ship everything else plus my car.

My family is here. A big chunk of my friends are here. But in the end I can always visit. My parents really want me to head up to Oregon or Washington because that's likely where they'll move once my mom retires but maybe I can convince them to move where I am Wink
Ahh yes the big city to the quieter life - sounds like a good plan.

Like my father in law always says - "there are no problems, only solutions" - I'm glad you are looking at this as an opportunity rather than a roadblock Smile.
Fellow Minnesotan here! I hope you end up getting the job here and end up moving. It's always great to hear what people think of the state (Pretty underrated in my opinion). Yeah the winters can be rough, but I've lived here my entire life and wouldn't want to live anywhere else (traveling is still great though). Nobody ever gets used to the winters even though we pretend to) but it's always fun to see how people from warmer areas react when it's 40°F out in the spring and everyone has shorts and a t-shirt on.

Wish you the best of luck!
tr1p1ea wrote:
I'm glad you are looking at this as an opportunity rather than a roadblock Smile


Yeah! I'm a firm believer of "Life is what make of it." I know it's viewed as a crock of poop to some, almost sounds like a /r/WowThanksImCured mentality/post, but it's really helped me.

matkeller19 wrote:
Fellow Minnesotan here! I hope you end up getting the job here and end up moving.


Even if they come back and tell me they've moved on to other candidates I'm still very, very tempted to move anyways; I've been in contact with an employment agency. The problem is that I'm not planning to move to Minneapolis so the jobs will be a bit harder to come by. But I can perhaps move out there, get an AirBnB for 2-3 months and live off my savings while I attempt to find a job. Once I do, move into an apartment.

Quote:
It's always great to hear what people think of the state (Pretty underrated in my opinion). Yeah the winters can be rough, but I've lived here my entire life and wouldn't want to live anywhere else (traveling is still great though).


I really loved the 5 or so days I spent there. Let me tell you, the rain was something else. Here in the Bay Area rain is just a sprinkle. Like, you're not going to get soaked going from your front door to your driveway but in Minnesota that's entirely a possibility and it happened. The thunder was phenomenal, I recorded about 5 minutes of audio of the rain & thunder.

Winter will be something else entirely, I'm sure.

Quote:
Nobody ever gets used to the winters even though we pretend to) but it's always fun to see how people from warmer areas react when it's 40°F out in the spring and everyone has shorts and a t-shirt on.


The friend whom I visited, lived in the Bay for a good chunk of her life before following her dad out there about 4 years ago. I visited two years ago and again this past September and loved it both times. So if she can handle it, I should settle in just fine. I already do well in cold weather, I tend to run a little warm anyways, but we rarely get below 45ºF. It was 44 the other morning and I was cold but I still had a light sweater on.
Alex wrote:
My parents really want me to head up to Oregon or Washington because that's likely where they'll move once my mom retires but maybe I can convince them to move where I am Wink


You should move to Washington, then we can be IRL friends like i have always wanted

/me hides far away
Pieman7373 wrote:
Alex wrote:
My parents really want me to head up to Oregon or Washington because that's likely where they'll move once my mom retires but maybe I can convince them to move where I am Wink


You should move to Washington, then we can be IRL friends like i have always wanted

/me hides far away


Sorry bro Sad Sometimes you have to let life lead you.

Apologies for not following up: (1) I wasn't sure where to post this and (2) I wanted to post when I was "settled in" and ready to write a dedicated topic but the goal posts kept moving on what "settled in" meant to me. So, I'll keep things brief. Got the job and two weeks later I started the road trip to Minnesota. I managed the drive in four days with roughly 31 hours of driving total. The size of the dash cam footage is 220GB. I've got the footage condensed into 7 minutes and working on lengthening that a tad as I slow down the footage for cool stops and also add in photos. I also exported the footage in real time for the giggles but YouTube doesn't accept videos longer than 12 hours so I think I'll speed it up by 3x.

The apartment is coming together nicely and work is super rewarding already. Holidays are looking a little lonely as I won't be heading home but I've made quite a few friends already. On the plus side, I finally get to have steak for thanksgiving dinner instead of turkey or ham. Razz
Figure'd I'll wrap this up!

Here's the YouTube video of what I'm dubbing a road trip journal. Covers the entire 32 hour drive in under 12 minutes. I slow down for points of interest and share photos from those stops. I could have made the zoom parts faster (it's currently at 25,000%) but things tend to become incomprehensible after a certain speed. Perhaps I'll make a short edit at some point, removing most of the drive, making the more straight parts faster, or just placing more focus on the POI's.



I am working on exporting an 11 hour video, that's at 3x because why not? I wanted to do it at regular speed but YT has a 12 hour limit Sad I'd have it done by now but I want to spend some time and talk more about the stops and places. Just figuring out what I want to talk about and how I want to do it (green screen + overlay, or just strictly audio?).
Cool trip - I like how the landscape changes often.

Also good that Wendy's SPICY NUGGS are back! (1:50 Razz).

Also is that devil's tower the mountain from Close encounters of the 3rd kind? Cool!
Yeah I love the time-lapse! As for the longer version, I dunno if I'd watch the entire 11 hours, but listening to you give more info on some of the places would be neat. I'd prefer just and audio overlay with some b-roll if you need to show something specific. Although I don't know exactly how you plan on implementing the green screen overlay so that may be just as good.
Welp, I have some good news and some bad news. Let's start with the bad one: unfortunately my life is becoming more and more busy in the past months, and it's becoming even busier the next year, so I barely work on any private programming project anymore. One cause for this is the good news: I have a girlfriend now Very Happy she's very cute and beautiful (heh, every man says that about his girlfriend Razz). So, that's my life summed up in 2 sentences from the past months, hope you enjoy it Wink.
Congrats Peter! Things are looking to get busier and better for me too this year Smile
My life's great b/c I just recovered from 2 days (which felt like forever Razz) of an ongoing 102°F fever. Now I can get back to programming. Smile

(and catch up on the 2 days of homework I missed in all my AP classes *sigh*)
I'm getting to know a lot of new people in the next weeks and that feels very good.

For me it is the case that I haven't fallen in love in a very, very long time.
Instead, since then I've always found something positive in every person I get to know.
When I get to know this person, I rave about them in my head for days.
I rave that it's a great person, my worldview is getting incredibly positive,
and I'm happy that I can find something beautiful in everyone.
It's a great feeling and an asset to my life.
I think these things no matter whether it's a boy or a girl.
I'm also amazed that I focus more on the mind and social behavior of this person
and put the physical / sexual in the background.
I try to talk a lot with these people in order to learn more about them
and to know how I should treat them so that they can live with me well.
This is how my friendships often come about.
And it's great that I can talk to these many new people in my everyday life and that I have great conversations.
So I will have a lot of nice feelings for the near future.
I moved to Japan last June so it's been ~1 year here in Kyoto, and it's great! At first, I was kinda bummed that we were going to move because I have good friends in the US, but now I have good friends in Japan and still are in touch with my friends in the US, so it's working out great. Also, food here is amazing; sushi is way more tasty compared to the US, and I also have had horse meat sashimi (馬刺し) and Yukhoe (which may sound weird but is absolutely delicious). Also, Japan is really safe; I was playing outside with my friends the other day in the courtyard of our apartment and left my bag on the ground and NOBODY stole it, considering the fact that it was definitely in the open, had 1000 yen inside (which is ~$10) and my phone. Japan is really nice, I would definitely recommend going here for vacation Smile
EDIT: lol this kinda looks like spam but it's not Laughing
I've made great progress in my console collection recently; I got a Playstation 2 from my cousins right before I was about to buy one, and used the money I had been saving for a PS2 to buy an original Xbox, which, alongside my Dreamcast and Wii, gives me the ability to play any game from the 6th generation of consoles. I've been enjoying games I used to play at a friends house a decade ago again, like ATV offroad fury 2 and Star Wars Battlefront II. Now if only I could find a PS3 at a decent price I could play every 7th gen game...
KMisthebomb wrote:
I moved to Japan last June so it's been ~1 year here in Kyoto, and it's great! At first, I was kinda bummed that we were going to move because I have good friends in the US, but now I have good friends in Japan and still are in touch with my friends in the US, so it's working out great. Also, food here is amazing; sushi is way more tasty compared to the US, and I also have had horse meat sashimi (馬刺し) and Yukhoe (which may sound weird but is absolutely delicious). Also, Japan is really safe; I was playing outside with my friends the other day in the courtyard of our apartment and left my bag on the ground and NOBODY stole it, considering the fact that it was definitely in the open, had 1000 yen inside (which is ~$10) and my phone. Japan is really nice, I would definitely recommend going here for vacation Smile
EDIT: 0x5 this kinda looks like spam but it's not 0x5


I'm a huge weeb and aside from wanting to attend an animecon for the first time, I want to visit Japan some day. Smile
  
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