The Random Thoughts Thread

I'm just gonna leave this here: I hate student debt and society's push on people to get degree after degree. Student debt is killing my generation and making what was once possible for our parents, impossible for us, unless you get significant help from the parents. Example: I have friends whose parents paid their $100k nursing school degree and then gave them a boat because it was just sitting around. Meanwhile, I can't even refinance my damn house because the bank says I have too much student debt. And then don't get me started on how college doesn't actually teach you anything about real life and unless you're a scientist or engineer or (insert other really smart person job), you probably could have learned most jobs out of high school and avoided crippling student debt. WTF is wrong with society? Not sure where I was going with this...so I'll stop now.
 
Moving to Boise was an excellent choice. I love Idaho.

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My folks moved to Boise from FLA years ago. Now they live on a few acres in Meridian and have never regretted a single minute of it. In fact, it's tough to get them to come back east for anything.
 
What do people do for work out there?

Work in the mountain west can be problematic. everyone loves the country, but its not always as simple to make a living. Wages are often lower, ...but the land! Yeah, that's part of the payoff, and a large reason people relocate to the mountain west, and part is that cost of living can also be lower, but in the overall picture, wages are often just lower. If you can make your own job, as some do, it helps. With less humans around though, theres less jobs to do by sheer numbers. In a city, you can find a job doing SOMETHING. sometimes there just isn't much work, or workers are imported (from other parts of the country or even from other countries) for seasonal work that many locals don't want or cant do because they need full time year round work. Working at Walmart becomes a reality. Seriously. Even part time, or seasonally. Finding a place in the mountain west that has the magic combination of decent paying work, not scads of people so you can enjoy the mountains, and reasonable cost of living is a hard thing at times. It can be done, but doesn't always work for everyone. Ive seen many people come and go over the years. Many retire to the mountain west, and that can work out well.
 
Work in the mountain west can be problematic. everyone loves the country, but its not always as simple to make a living. Wages are often lower, ...but the land! Yeah, that's part of the payoff, and a large reason people relocate to the mountain west, and part is that cost of living can also be lower, but in the overall picture, wages are often just lower. If you can make your own job, as some do, it helps. With less humans around though, theres less jobs to do by sheer numbers. In a city, you can find a job doing SOMETHING. sometimes there just isn't much work, or workers are imported (from other parts of the country or even from other countries) for seasonal work that many locals don't want or cant do because they need full time year round work. Working at Walmart becomes a reality. Seriously. Even part time, or seasonally. Finding a place in the mountain west that has the magic combination of decent paying work, not scads of people so you can enjoy the mountains, and reasonable cost of living is a hard thing at times. It can be done, but doesn't always work for everyone. Ive seen many people come and go over the years. Many retire to the mountain west, and that can work out well.

Our choices came down to Colorado Springs and Boise. But in the end, Boise had more to offer regarding all of our families goals and needs.

As for the economy and jobs, this area seems to have plenty of work, and actually has a lack of skilled labors. Based on my demographics research, the area hasn't been flooded with south of the border workers yet either. I see NOW HIRING signs everywhere. I do know based on our income we entered the upper 5% of earners when we moved here. So if you work remotely, you can live a very comfortable life in this area. The median income is 34k for the whole area. So wages are probably lower.

It's also a good rental market for investors. Solid diverse economy (rare in the PNW outside the coastal cities), growing middle class, vacancy is 2.8%, housing shortage currently and low housing costs. SFH under 150k, MFH 220k - perfect for our current goals. We picked up a SFH (single family home) for base of operations, that we can rent next year when we move to another. And are closing on a triplex that will cashflow now. Getting our feet in the game.

Overall, it's a decent launching place for adventure and starting a new business path. We can get into the Saw Tooths in under 2 hours. And we just spent a couple days here in Glacier, which wasn't bad with a 9hr drive. It's a big change from it taking just 4 hours to get out of the state of Florida.

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I could get used to this.
 
I believe sir, you are on the right track. :)

Most of my mountain time has been in much smaller towns, but things could be worse than being in Boise.
 
Random stupid question.

On some videos you see, generally news feeds, why do they shrink the picture down to the middle third of the screen? I spent damn near my whole life watching a square CRT TV, finally beak down and get a widescreen, and the world tricks me and starts showing "skinny videos".
 
Random stupid question.

On some videos you see, generally news feeds, why do they shrink the picture down to the middle third of the screen? I spent damn near my whole life watching a square CRT TV, finally beak down and get a widescreen, and the world tricks me and starts showing "skinny videos".
Cell phones held vertical make skinny videos

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^^^^Oh...then why the heck do they have to torment me with the blurred images of the same damned video on the margins? <smart phone illiterate> I don't think I've ever taken a video on my phone, I guess I could have my 6 year old grandson show me.:cool:
 
Random stupid question.

On some videos you see, generally news feeds, why do they shrink the picture down to the middle third of the screen? I spent damn near my whole life watching a square CRT TV, finally beak down and get a widescreen, and the world tricks me and starts showing "skinny videos".
Because it's not HD and they are trying to compress pixels. It won't do that on HD channels shot with updated equipment.
 
Someone stole my DeWalt drill from my garage. Walked in, took the bag, drill, charger and batteries and left the bits. That took balls! I was out walking the dogs for 20 minutes and poof!
 
The face of regret..
My son had a small incident with a plastic stick he was playing with and his face. He fell face down into it and is lucky it wasn't his eye.

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