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J800: I was just made this profile & they asked all those questions so I relayed it on this post.
ChristieP & chipper21: I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. I have 3 years experience being the lead EE at our facility. I'm not necessarily concerned about not finding a job at this point but have not actively engaged with a recruiter. I am looking into areas first. I moved from MN to LA because of a job offer (other one was middle of nowhere Nebraska). Always wanted to move around the U.S. & that just happened first.
DTXman34, bluescreen73, & WorldKlas: Thanks for the advice on the outdoor recreation. That was my worry. One thing I really miss is elevation. Everything is so flat in Southern Louisiana.
Thank you all for your help & advice. Sounds like there will be positives & negatives anywhere. I like the breweries & foodie aspect of Dallas you guys described!
If healthy outdoor living in a scenic environment is REALLY important to you, scratch Dallas. Yes, plenty of people bike, run, play tennis etc outside here but during the summer months they're active in spite of the weather, not because of it. Also, aside from a few neighborhoods with natural hills, Dallas is flat prairie land. All local lakes were man-made. My gut feeling based on what you posted is that Dallas is not the place for you.
If you're interested in Texas, look into Austin. You might also like Denver, Charlotte, Nashville, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, etc.
What I liked about Minnesota:
1. Lakes
2. Healthy
3. Outdoor activities
4. Hiking
5. Breweries
6. GREAT urban food (ex. a bed of kale mixed with wild rice & topped with glazed salmon = regular restaurant kind of dish)
7. Happy people
What I DIDN'T like about Minnesota:
1. Winters were bloody horrendous
2. Winters were roughly 8 months long
3. You couldn't be outside enjoying life in the death of winter
4. No sunshine for months in the winter = depressing
What I like about Southern Louisiana:
1. No winters
2. Drive thru daquiris
3. Low rent cost ($800/mon for a 2 bed 2 bath in the middle of town)
What I don't like about Southern Louisiana:
1. HUMIDITY IS AWFUL. I can't anymore.
2. Snakes
3. Fattening food
4. Nothing but fattening food
5. Small town - boring
6. People grow up here, go to high school here, & stay here - no one else allowed in our group kind of mentality
7. Not many college grad young professionals
8. Smoking allowed in bars
9. Too redneck for my taste
10. No one seems to care about hygiene
11. Crime
Alright guys... That takes care of my likes & dislikes. Tell me all about Dallas!!!
Your rent will be much higher in Dallas.
It's humid here too.
We have snakes here too, though probably not as many as southern Louisiana.
Plenty of fattening food here.
Smoking is not allowed in bars in Dallas, though some suburbs still allow it.
Dallas has its fair share of crime, but it's no Chicago.
If you ask me, Dallas isn't redneck ENOUGH anymore.
Hygiene...eh...I don't notice stinky or dirty people around.
Dallas has plenty of townies, but you won't meet them in Uptown.
A lot of what you liked about Minnesota isn't as easy to find here. People in Texas are far less healthy on average, and Texas has the most uninsured people of any state in the US. We do not have lakes...we have man-made reservoirs. Hiking usually consists of walking on a man-made (sometimes paved, sometimes not) trail. You have to drive south and/or west of here to find actual hills.
Outdoor activities...they exist here, but you need to be more specific about which ones you like.
Your rent will be much higher in Dallas.
It's humid here too.
We have snakes here too, though probably not as many as southern Louisiana. Plenty of fattening food here.
Smoking is not allowed in bars in Dallas, though some suburbs still allow it.
Dallas has its fair share of crime, but it's no Chicago.
If you ask me, Dallas isn't redneck ENOUGH anymore.
Hygiene...eh...I don't notice stinky or dirty people around.
Dallas has plenty of townies, but you won't meet them in Uptown.
A lot of what you liked about Minnesota isn't as easy to find here. People in Texas are far less healthy on average, and Texas has the most uninsured people of any state in the US. We do not have lakes...we have man-made reservoirs. Hiking usually consists of walking on a man-made (sometimes paved, sometimes not) trail. You have to drive south and/or west of here to find actual hills.
Outdoor activities...they exist here, but you need to be more specific about which ones you like.
Yes we have plenty of fattening food, but that doesn't mean we lack healthy food. It's not exactly southern Louisiana. If you're in poverty or lower income here, yes it can be difficult to live a healthy lifestyle. I can't speak on Minnesota, but I've been to Michigan and am quite familiar with Wisconsin. It is eye popping the amount of overweight, poorly dressed people there. Visit Upstate NY or most of PA or Ohio. Dallas looks like SoCal in comparison as far as physically active/focus on appearance goes.
If healthy outdoor living in a scenic environment is REALLY important to you, scratch Dallas. Yes, plenty of people bike, run, play tennis etc outside here but during the summer months they're active in spite of the weather, not because of it. Also, aside from a few neighborhoods with natural hills, Dallas is flat prairie land. All local lakes were man-made. My gut feeling based on what you posted is that Dallas is not the place for you.
If you're interested in Texas, look into Austin. You might also like Denver, Charlotte, Nashville, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, etc.
I'd scratch off Portland and Seattle due to #4
What I DIDN'T like about Minnesota:
1. Winters were bloody horrendous
2. Winters were roughly 8 months long
3. You couldn't be outside enjoying life in the death of winter 4. No sunshine for months in the winter = depressing
Yes we have plenty of fattening food, but that doesn't mean we lack healthy food. It's not exactly southern Louisiana. If you're in poverty or lower income here, yes it can be difficult to live a healthy lifestyle. I can't speak on Minnesota, but I've been to Michigan and am quite familiar with Wisconsin. It is eye popping the amount of overweight, poorly dressed people there. Visit Upstate NY or most of PA or Ohio. Dallas looks like SoCal in comparison as far as physically active/focus on appearance goes.
It depends on where you live, definitely; but my point stands about obesity in Texas and in the DFW area specifically.
There are some areas of the metroplex where there are clusters of restaurants offering "healthy" options (which often depend on one's definition of "healthy"), but there are even larger areas where haute cuisine might consist of unvarying threads of red neon signs along major highways featuring the usual suspects (Chili's, Applebee's, Red Robin, On The Border, maybe a Texas Roadhouse).
If you spend all your time in affluent areas, you're far less likely to be confronted by Texas's obesity epidemic. Just because you aren't looking at it doesn't mean it isn't there...nor that we don't all pay for it.
https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-ci...america/10532/ (DFW ranks 25th on that list out of 100 cities, with higher-ranked cities being fatter. Minneapolis ranks 98th on that same list. Baton Rouge LA is #20. Lafayette, LA is #8. LA is #76. San Diego is #88. Like SoCal my foot.)
Nobody's arguing that Louisiana isn't a fat state....but if you think north Texas folks are as lithe as people in southern California, you must not get out much.
I am a retired chemical engineer who grew up less than a 100 miles north of dfw but worked in Houston for 30 years. Outdoors to me is golf. I find Houston similar to the Louisiana southern towns. Dallas is not as flat as the coastal areas. It's not mountaineoud but is definitely significantly less flat. It's much less humid too no comparison really to Houston. But summers are as hot feeling due to sun and no clouds here and higher temps due to lower humidity. Both have summers that are rough. It I play golf all summer both places. If you want hilly mountains for outdoors SE Oklahoma is 3 or 4 hours from dfw not 500 miles as in Houston.
Houston is the engineering city but Dallas is s close second with lots of manufacturing jobs second only to Houston in Texas. It's two orders of magnitude more vibrant and fun than La to me even NO.
I can give you more details as needed but come on up I think you will like it a lot.
ChristieP & chipper21: I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. I have 3 years experience being the lead EE at our facility. I'm not necessarily concerned about not finding a job at this point but have not actively engaged with a recruiter. I am looking into areas first. I moved from MN to LA because of a job offer (other one was middle of nowhere Nebraska). Always wanted to move around the U.S. & that just happened first.
Texas Instruments is a big EE employer in the area.
It depends on where you live, definitely; but my point stands about obesity in Texas and in the DFW area specifically.
There are some areas of the metroplex where there are clusters of restaurants offering "healthy" options (which often depend on one's definition of "healthy"), but there are even larger areas where haute cuisine might consist of unvarying threads of red neon signs along major highways featuring the usual suspects (Chili's, Applebee's, Red Robin, On The Border, maybe a Texas Roadhouse).
If you spend all your time in affluent areas, you're far less likely to be confronted by Texas's obesity epidemic. Just because you aren't looking at it doesn't mean it isn't there...nor that we don't all pay for it.
https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-ci...america/10532/ (DFW ranks 25th on that list out of 100 cities, with higher-ranked cities being fatter. Minneapolis ranks 98th on that same list. Baton Rouge LA is #20. Lafayette, LA is #8. LA is #76. San Diego is #88. Like SoCal my foot.)
Nobody's arguing that Louisiana isn't a fat state....but if you think north Texas folks are as lithe as people in southern California, you must not get out much.
I was talking about Wisconsin, Ohio, PA, and Michigan making Dallas specifically (not Texas as a whole) looking more like SoCal... I didn't mention Minnesota, which may be very different than those states. I lived in one of those states and would find it shocking that they rank lower for obesity than DFW. I'm not denying Texas in general has an obesity problem.... but specifically on the WalletHub list, it includes a category called "healthy environment," which isn't exactly cut and dry. It really punishes DFW due to ranking low in terms of outdoor recreation, which may or may not be a culprit for obesity.
Even then, no one ever surveyed me about my health or activity. I'll take these lists with a grain of salt.
I was talking about Wisconsin, Ohio, PA, and Michigan making Dallas specifically (not Texas as a whole) looking more like SoCal... I didn't mention Minnesota, which may be very different than those states. I lived in one of those states and would find it shocking that they rank lower for obesity than DFW. I'm not denying Texas in general has an obesity problem.... but specifically on the WalletHub list, it includes a category called "healthy environment," which isn't exactly cut and dry. It really punishes DFW due to ranking low in terms of outdoor recreation, which may or may not be a culprit for obesity.
Even then, no one ever surveyed me about my health or activity. I'll take these lists with a grain of salt.
I mentioned Minneapolis because the OP mentioned she was from Minnesota. I don't know which city she's from and don't remember whether she mentioned it.
My point is that DFW specifically and Texas in general have a big problem with overweight/obesity. We're on the fatter end of the spectrum for sure. There are cities/states fatter than us, but that shouldn't give us much comfort.
YOU may not have that problem. *I* don't either. But we still pay for it.
Another issue, previously mentioned, is that income is inversely correlated with BMI, i.e. the higher your income is, the less likely you are to be fat. So if you're affluent and live in an affluent area, work with affluent people, and golf on weekends...you're far less likely to see the unfortunate obese in north Texas. But trust me...they're there!
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