[Toymeister]

Originally Posted by NorthPoleMarathoner

Michigan

As a resident of Alabama I am offended by the comparison. Alabama is home to the second largest research park in the nation (No MIchigan is not the largest). The schools in ALabama are not inferior to MIchigan. The roads certainly are not.

Yet some how in a fit of fiscal responsibility Alabama mangages to pull this off with 80% lower property taxes and virtually identical income tax. Alabama's auto industry has grown since 1990 while MIchigan's has tanked. There is no viable difference between UAW wages and non UAW wages.

So how is this done, well somethings are far differnt, prisioners in Alabama keep the roads clean, welfare is close to starvation. Teachers can live on their salary but they certainly will not be rich. State Police are well compensated but certainly not up to Michigan's standards. There are fewer state parks, although the ones we have are open and funded.

I have a buddy who like to sum up debates, if you are losing, with a catch phrase: So how is that working out for you?

So Michigan, a beautiful state with so many talented people, How is it working out for you?

[Reen11]

Me and my fiancee are looking to move out this summer to VA. Michigan isnt so not diverse and split up..people arent too rude but its so many negative things to say about MI. I grew up here and i can't wait to leave. The weather is crazy and the unemployment line keeps growing. Its lot to do in MI though and its a party city in pontiac and downtown royal oak or detroit. I love my friends and places we hang out but im looking for a better future and i wouldn't want my children growing up in this shot down place.

[magellan]

Originally Posted by Toymeister

As a resident of Alabama I am offended by the comparison. Alabama is home to the second largest research park in the nation (No MIchigan is not the largest). The schools in ALabama are not inferior to MIchigan. The roads certainly are not.

Yet some how in a fit of fiscal responsibility Alabama mangages to pull this off with 80% lower property taxes and virtually identical income tax. Alabama's auto industry has grown since 1990 while MIchigan's has tanked. There is no viable difference between UAW wages and non UAW wages.

So how is this done, well somethings are far differnt, prisioners in Alabama keep the roads clean, welfare is close to starvation. Teachers can live on their salary but they certainly will not be rich. State Police are well compensated but certainly not up to Michigan's standards. There are fewer state parks, although the ones we have are open and funded.

I have a buddy who like to sum up debates, if you are losing, with a catch phrase: So how is that working out for you?

So Michigan, a beautiful state with so many talented people, How is it working out for you?

That's not your buddy that says that, it's Dr. Phil.

Let's see, manufacturers are moving production to Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Central America, and yes, Alabama. How's that working out for you?

But seriously, Alabama has what, a Honda, a Hyundai, and a Mercedes plant? How many automotive R&D facilities are in Alabama? (over 200 in Michigan). How many foreign automakers have facilities in Alabama? (8 in Michigan). How many of the top 150 automotive suppliers in the U.S. have HQ in Alabama? (93 in Michigan). Or better yet, how many automotive related companies in Alabama have more than like 20 or 30 people working for them?

It's all cute and stuff that Alabama is trying, but do they really want to become the new home of the automotive industry? And all that it entails?

Here are some charts for you to chew on. The first is Alabama manufacturing employment. The second is overrall employment growth (negative) for Alabama since 2007.





Just sayin.

[BillyH]

Originally Posted by Toymeister

As a resident of Alabama I am offended by the comparison. Alabama is home to the second largest research park in the nation (No MIchigan is not the largest). The schools in ALabama are not inferior to MIchigan. The roads certainly are not.

Yet some how in a fit of fiscal responsibility Alabama mangages to pull this off with 80% lower property taxes and virtually identical income tax. Alabama's auto industry has grown since 1990 while MIchigan's has tanked. There is no viable difference between UAW wages and non UAW wages.

So how is this done, well somethings are far differnt, prisioners in Alabama keep the roads clean, welfare is close to starvation. Teachers can live on their salary but they certainly will not be rich. State Police are well compensated but certainly not up to Michigan's standards. There are fewer state parks, although the ones we have are open and funded.

I have a buddy who like to sum up debates, if you are losing, with a catch phrase: So how is that working out for you?

So Michigan, a beautiful state with so many talented people, How is it
working out for you?

I thought it was Mississippi they always picked on, a person from Arkansas "thank God for Mississippi we are forty-ninth instead of fifty". I wouldn't feel too bad about the T shirt as one poster said it didn't make sense, Michigan is not a Canadian province. We all know Michigan and expecially Detroit has gotten all the bad press in recent years, although MI is a beautiful state I have driven through it twice.

[GreasePaint]

I am replying to the original poster's question:
"How many of you are looking to move out of Michigan?"

I will approach this from a slightly different angle as I do not live there today but I am from Michigan and have considered going back many many times. I love this site city-data.com) and reading everyone’s perspectives on town’s and this is the first time I have really felt moved to write something profound. I hope folks won’t flame me too badly with negative comments.

In order to explain why I feel about Michigan the way I do, I feel it is important to share with you some of my history as a man.

I was born in Detroit in 1970. I lived in the lower class part of Grosse Pointe Woods in Wayne County just north of 7 Mile Rd and Mack Ave. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old in 1973. Prior to 1977 I bounced back and forth between my father’s parents’ home there in Grosse Point and my mother’s rented home in Detroit on Alter Rd between Warren and Mack. Court awarded custody of me to my grandparents as my mother was judged an unfit mother when she tried to kill herself and me by setting the house on fire.

In 1978 my grandfather who worked for Ford got hurt; he literally broke his back in 2 places. We had to learn to get by on much less. My family moved to Harrison Township just south of Metropolitan Beach on 16 Mile Road (Crocker and Jefferson along Lake Saint Clair to be even more specific). I graduated from L’Anse Creuse High School an average good student. I worked at K-Mart during the day and went to Macomb Community College at night for business. We lived there until 1989 when my father who was a mechanic was hit broadside in a really terrible crash. During his rehabilitation he was awarded some money from the other driver's insurance company. We moved the entire family to Oscoda Michigan to get out of what was quickly becoming "the hassle of the big city"…is what we thought anyway.

I worked for Glen’s Market (an upper lower-peninsula grocery chain that is still around I imagine). The two years of living in Oscoda from age 19 to 21 was one of the loneliest times in my life. At a time when a young man should be going to college and dating, I was working to help my family and never did anything but fish to help feed us. Disgusted with my own situation and resenting my father just a little for moving us to Oscoda, I did what many young men in the US do (I imagine); I enlisted in the US Military.

I was 21 when I joined the US Navy and left Oscoda behind. I was recruited by my cousin who was off on leave for 30 days home fresh from Saudia Arabia. He was a construction battalion engineer (CB=SeaBee). 4 years later I was married and discharged after the Gulf War and some time in Somalia. I came back to where my family was and worked for $6.75 an hour in a warehouse and bought a home. Even though I love year round outdoor activities like fishing, hunting, skiing, snowmobiling; the winter was absolutely brutal. My young wife who is from Los Angeles grew to hate being inside all the time and going to Alpena 50 miles even just to see a show, because the local theatre where we lived in Oscoda shut down in the winter. I think aside from making our own indoor winter activities, we saw every movie in the video rental store too. The winter of 1995/96 the snow fell in October and stayed until almost June. My wife was asking me questions like, “Does the snow stay this long every year”? She was miserable, but deeply in love.

Hours got cut at work for both of us and soon we barely made enough to make the house payment and eat too. I started losing weight and begin fishing a great deal and gardening to try and supplement what we ate and reduce our costs. We were slowly starving but determined to make it. I was going to college again at night when hours got cut and soon gas to drive to school 50 miles away was impossible. And I began to ask myself questions like, “When I get my business degree exactly what do I think I am going to do with it in this little town”? I remember my father and his ex-wife bringing food over to us in a box, and the swallowing of my pride as I took it. One year later I lost my job and could not find another. Here I was a former US Military electronics expert with a stellar record and in great shape, with a great leadership record, and early knowledge of Windows and UNIX computer systems; I could align satellite and radio transmitters, and darn near make a bomb out of Bisquick; but I was reduced to asking local establishments if I could wash dishes. I had sunk just about as low as I thought I could. But I loved being near my family and kept hoping that things were going to turn for us. I had not washed dishes for money since I was 13. It was a very low spot in our lives for sure.

We tried to sell the house and find work, even downstate in Saginaw, Detroit, over in Grand Rapids, anywhere. But it seemed nobody was interested in hiring us. My wife spoke to her old boss in Los Angeles as we stayed friendly with him and his wife. My wife mentioned that we were looking for work. He said to her when we left 1 year ago, that he would hire her back anytime if she came back to California. So at age 26, with no jobs, no cash, a home that nobody wanted to buy, in a town where a major US Air Force base had just closed down and property values were static and the only folks that lived there year round were retirees or folks that were well rooted in the community as local shop owners; we put our furniture in storage and drove back to Los Angeles.

So from 1996 to 2000 I worked 3 places. I worked for a military contractor that was moving our southern California based operation to a small east coast town in Virginia and our company’s contract was up for renegotiation in 6 months. I did not want to move to a little town in a place I had never been and then get laid off again and not be able to find another job. I already did that…lesson learned. So I left and went to work for MCI as a computer geek learning telecommunications in 1997. In 1998 MCI was bought by WorldCom and they pretty much told us that our jobs would be eliminated. In fall of 1998 I went to work for Level 3 Communications, helping to run a small datacenter in downtown Los Angeles. Now having a son and making more money my wife came home to be a mommy. Still missing Michigan and hoping to get back to good hunting and fishing and good schools (but now as a father sees things) I put in for a position that opened up in Southfield Michigan office of Level 3. My regional VP saw this as his team wanting to leave; and he instead offered me a job in Seattle WA. Seattle was a place that I had only ever been to once when I was in the Navy. Port Angeles WA in the Olympic Peninsula near Forks WA would never be the same. So from 2000 to 2007 I worked there and bought and sold several homes. It was beautiful and the money was great. I felt so much thanks for my life when I would talk to relatives that were back in Michigan getting laid off for the second time in a year. They were not lazy or stupid, just geographically locked and had the same mindset I had years before, I was born here…and I ain’t ever gonna leave here.


In 2007 Telecom consolidations continued and I was laid off as a Regional Director after having managed Central Offices and Outside Install & Repair services for 7 states, including Alaska. I could not find work for 6 months as a manager or an engineer in a town busting with techy jobs. The old adage that it’s not what you know but who you know proved itself time and time again in my life and this time would be no different. A fine gent that ran the global operations team that I was part of at Level 3 Communications was kind enough to offer me a job in Naples FL. Tired of interviewing over and over for positions and really feeling like I better do something fast before I lost my current home like I did the one in Michigan years before, I was able to drop my price and sell the home quickly to some nice folks. I drove 3800 miles from one end of the US to the other with the same wife and two young boys now to take the only job I had been offered.

Today I live in Naples FL and make about $20k above US Poverty level, so we have very little. But we are surviving on just one salary so mommy can still be a mommy and not let day care raise the car-jackers of tomorrow. And we fear layoff less today than we have been since 1996. I have many professional certifications and I am a real terror on many computer systems, in fact there is not much I cannot do. I could likely take a job working for Google or some other dot.com in San Jose or New York, but who needs the big city and the long commute to an unsafe place. I have thought many times of just moving to some small little town in northern lower Michigan like my Dad did to us because he thought he was doing right thing for us all. I sure miss the walleye fishing and all the good things about Michigan. But the reason I cannot live there today even though I love the place, is that there are absolutely no jobs, especially for Linux geeks. Now while jobs are going down in abundance in many places in the USA these days, the data that I see for my beloved Great Lakes State is NOT enough to make me consider taking a job there making $30 or $40k only to live in fear of that job going away a year later and me being stuck with a home I cannot sell again.

I thought your question deserved an appropriate answer. I feel for my Great Lakes State family and neighbors but right now I simply cannot see me coming back there to live. I have never been to Alabama, but Phoenix is nice as long as you do not ever expect to see snow. Contrary to what people think it does get humid in parts of Arizona.

[fallingwater]

Originally Posted by kazoopilot

I also moved to South Bend (actually Niles, MI). I was going to move to Georgia, but then I found a good job in my field in South Bend, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to live in Michigan and be close to friends and family (I used to live in Three Rivers, about 30 minutes away). So far, the South Bend area seems like a great place to live, except for the large amount of Notre Lame fans. I was surprised how well the area is doing compared to Michigan, even Niles seems more depressed than South Bend proper and areas like Mishawaka and Granger. It's a shame the economic well being of the area can't transfer over to Michigan.

LOL Ya, lots of Notre Dame fans for sure. Hubby and I looked at Niles but property taxes in MI are sooo much higher than IN. We got more of a house in IN. We bought in Granger. I am surprised though about the crime in South Bend and Mishawaka. For a smaller area, there seems to be a lot of crime. What also surprised me is that there seems to be a very large social class divide here. I grew up in the Detroit burbs and it was common to have a Ford factory worker and a lawyer as my neighbors. Here, blue collar live in Mishawaka and professionals live in Granger. Not all of course but it seems to be the majority of the situation. Mishawaka and South Bend people dislike Granger people. They say Granger people are rich and snobby. We rented in Mishawaka for about 9 months. My son got a lot of guff when he told his classmates he was moving to Granger. He was accused of being rich. Now let me tell ya, being accused of being rich is a first for me. Some of the attitudes here are a little backwards but Im getting used to it. My graphic design degree is going to be useless here. Not very tech savvy peeps here. So back to school I go.

[fallingwater]

Originally Posted by Toymeister

As a resident of Alabama I am offended by the comparison. Alabama is home to the second largest research park in the nation (No MIchigan is not the largest). The schools in ALabama are not inferior to MIchigan. The roads certainly are not.

Yet some how in a fit of fiscal responsibility Alabama mangages to pull this off with 80% lower property taxes and virtually identical income tax. Alabama's auto industry has grown since 1990 while MIchigan's has tanked. There is no viable difference between UAW wages and non UAW wages.

So how is this done, well somethings are far differnt, prisioners in Alabama keep the roads clean, welfare is close to starvation. Teachers can live on their salary but they certainly will not be rich. State Police are well compensated but certainly not up to Michigan's standards. There are fewer state parks, although the ones we have are open and funded.

I have a buddy who like to sum up debates, if you are losing, with a catch phrase: So how is that working out for you?

So Michigan, a beautiful state with so many talented people, How is it working out for you?

A good friend of mine moved to Huntsville a couple of years ago. Her neighbors work for NASA. I think there is a big misconception about AL. I will admit when she told me she was moving to AL, I was like "what?!" Huntsville is becoming a mecca for drawing in highly professional and educated people. My friend loves the quality of life there. Her kids go to top notch schools and there is a real back to basics feel on parenting. Kids play outside. I personally wouldnt make it there due to the area being so conservative but AL is not some hick state that people want to believe it is.

[fallingwater]

Originally Posted by GreasePaint

I am replying to the original poster's question:
"How many of you are looking to move out of Michigan?"

I will approach this from a slightly different angle as I do not live there today but I am from Michigan and have considered going back many many times. I love this site city-data.com) and reading everyone’s perspectives on town’s and this is the first time I have really felt moved to write something profound. I hope folks won’t flame me too badly with negative comments.

In order to explain why I feel about Michigan the way I do, I feel it is important to share with you some of my history as a man.

Wow, you have led quite a life! We are the same age and I think our generation feels lost. I just read a great article about Generation Xers. I wish I could find it now but it described how our generation has had to make several career changes in only a 10-15 yr span because we were caught up in the dot.com bust and other tides of economic woes. For me, I had a great career right out of high school. I worked in logistics for 10 yrs, my fall came after 9-11 and all exporting laws changed. My experience meant nothing as a college degree was preferred. I had more money at the age of 22 than I do at 37. I thought as I got older, I would have more and not less. I am graduating soon with my degree in graphic design. It will be useless. Hubby got a good job offer out of MI and we went for it. But the area we live in is not tech savvy and I have not seen one job for graphic design in this area. So back to school I go I guess. I stay at home for the time being. Im glad I am here for my son but he is going on 13. He is in school all day and old enough to be home alone on occasion. So maybe someday I will have some sort of career.

[GreasePaint]

Originally Posted by fallingwater

Wow, you have led quite a life! We are the same age and I think our generation feels lost. I just read a great article about Generation Xers. I wish I could find it now but it described how our generation has had to make several career changes in only a 10-15 yr span because we were caught up in the dot.com bust and other tides of economic woes. For me, I had a great career right out of high school. I worked in logistics for 10 yrs, my fall came after 9-11 and all exporting laws changed. My experience meant nothing as a college degree was preferred. I had more money at the age of 22 than I do at 37. I thought as I got older, I would have more and not less. I am graduating soon with my degree in graphic design. It will be useless. Hubby got a good job offer out of MI and we went for it. But the area we live in is not tech savvy and I have not seen one job for graphic design in this area. So back to school I go I guess. I stay at home for the time being. Im glad I am here for my son but he is going on 13. He is in school all day and old enough to be home alone on occasion. So maybe someday I will have some sort of career.

Just a regular humble life FallingWater, but thanks; I might have made it sound more spectacular but I am very humble indeed. I do often feel lost. Right now I am just lucky to have a job when so many of our countrymen (and women) are without one. We have a roof over our heads and the kids are fed. And by packing a lunch each day I have lost weight and made it so we can enjoy an evening eating out at a favorite restaurant, and even sometimes take in a movie once a month with wife and kids family.

If I could find a simple Windows/Linux system admin position for some hospital or small VOIP company; or even perform menial utility cable locator job for the highway department or some construction company making a small salary to sustain us, I would buy a house today on Higgins Lake in Roscommon MI. We would live simple and just enjoy our ability to catch and grow our own food (skin a buck and run a trot line style), and send my kids to a nice rural school where there is not threat of gangs. A beautifully homogenized and boring little life. I sure do miss the deer hunting and snowmobiling. Naples is lovely but my thoughts often roam back to Higgins Lake and whisper things to me like, “If you're gonna be broke you might as be broke and live where you wanna live”. I have even thought of just investing in rental cabins and becoming a handyman (rope and ride, hammer and paint, do things with my hands, that most men can’t) as those with money always seem to take vacations “up north”.

Regarding jobs in Michigan specifically though, what you said makes me think of all the people like us struggling to learn more, get that new hot or well saught after accreditation for whatever it is that we are after. If there is no demand for we go to school for where we live and you don't want to move to where those skills or certifications are wanted…it is the same as having skills and wanting to live in a small northern town but not being able to make a living there. It sure makes it tough to pick a major or a vocational certificate sometimes. Two of my pals have Masters Degrees and they make as much as me, Mister no degree. Most of the small towns in upper lower peninsula that I have visited have seasonal type jobs, aside from if they have a hospital or something like that needing Doctors and highly trained people like that. Most of what I see is grocery, diners & fast food, retail (maybe they will have a Wal-Mart or K-Mart), a few gas stations and party stores, etc. I know that would not make me happy, I did that when I was young and hated it then. And it would be waste of skills and denying what I enjoy doing and eventually I would leave and that would not be right for either party. For example, let’s say that you study and take all your tests to become a Cisco Certified CCIE. CCIE is Cisco's highest certificate when it comes to working with Cisco Routers, Switches, and TCP/IP technologies. This is a highly desired certificate for companies that use that tech (telecom, internet service providers, big companies with big internal computer IP networks, healthcare, banks, etc). But the problem is that if you live in Houghton Lake MI and you love the area and will not leave, there is not any call for a CCIE there. The problem seems that nobody wants or needs skilled labor in these beautiful small towns. Some places like Denver or I guess more closely Boulder have become tech hot spots that exploded because they were close to or inside recreation areas. A great example would be the large datacenters and companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are building in the eastern WA town of Quincy. Nobody ever heard of Quincy WA before that. It was mostly agricultural. Now it is a technical oasis. But it seems for the most part, if you want the big money and a nice house you must commute to the big city and fight traffic every day and actually spend less time with the ones you love just to take care of them. If you can get by working in a party store and never feel a calling to do more than that for a job and are totally fulfilled in other ways, there is nothing wrong with that at all. Sometimes I am envious. To quote the great Bob Ritchie: “With a wife and kids at home, a job somewhere on some assembly line, I wish I had that life, I bet you wish you had mine”.

Let me ask some of the folks that are presently living in Michigan “today”. I heard that Traverse City has a small tech community, is this so? I heard that there are several small VOIP (Voice Over IP) companies. I find nothing to show this. I know that there is a company in Fort Myers FL called Apollo Health Care Systems that is headquartered out of Traverse City MI and they have some tech up there, but that is all I have ever heard of being in Traverse City as far as tech. I am finding it more than tough to find any real resources online to show any kind of tech jobs in the northern lower peninsula of MI, or even away from Southfield MI. I can prove it…if you go to any job-site (pick any one…say CareerBuilder, Monster, Jobster, Dice, The Ladders) and enter the word Linux and Traverse City, all I get back is "that word did not appear in any positions in this area...but try these matches for that area". Then the systems return tons of elderly care or in-home nursing jobs. Those are important jobs too, but not ones I would be good at. I find it impossible that in a State the size of Michigan (the place I love) that there are absolutely no jobs that require knowledge of Linux. Proof of this is that Michigan is home to MERIT Network Inc in Ann Arbor; these are the folks that run RADB (http://www.ra.net) the Internet Routing Assets Database/Registry. This global database is what every major ISP, phone company, wireless provider, telecom carrier, and large companies that has a large IP network uses to obtain and list IP traffic routing policies for everyone else. It all runs on BSD UNIX or some distribution of the free operating system Linux. So with smart folks like that in Michigan, and operations like that in Michigan, how can there be no Linux jobs there in Michigan? That is absolutely incredible to me.

Years ago one the smartest and most ambitious people I knew retired from the Navy. I saw him years later pumping gas in Oregon. He did not remember me, but I knew him instantly. I asked why he was pumping gas, did he own the place and decided to take an entrepreneurial path? No, he said there was not much use for a nuclear engineer where he wanted to live. He was as happy as a clam living there and pumping people’s gas 5 days a week. Another nuclear trained person I know is an ordained minister in Arizona. When I met him his was a data analyst.

[magellan]

Originally Posted by GreasePaint

Just a regular humble life FallingWater, but thanks; I might have made it sound more spectacular but I am very humble indeed. I do often feel lost. Right now I am just lucky to have a job when so many of our countrymen (and women) are without one. We have a roof over our heads and the kids are fed. And by packing a lunch each day I have lost weight and made it so we can enjoy an evening eating out at a favorite restaurant, and even sometimes take in a movie once a month with wife and kids family.

If I could find a simple Windows/Linux system admin position for some hospital or small VOIP company; or even perform menial utility cable locator job for the highway department or some construction company making a small salary to sustain us, I would buy a house today on Higgins Lake in Roscommon MI. We would live simple and just enjoy our ability to catch and grow our own food (skin a buck and run a trot line style), and send my kids to a nice rural school where there is not threat of gangs. A beautifully homogenized and boring little life. I sure do miss the deer hunting and snowmobiling. Naples is lovely but my thoughts often roam back to Higgins Lake and whisper things to me like, “If you're gonna be broke you might as be broke and live where you wanna live”. I have even thought of just investing in rental cabins and becoming a handyman (rope and ride, hammer and paint, do things with my hands, that most men can’t) as those with money always seem to take vacations “up north”.

Regarding jobs in Michigan specifically though, what you said makes me think of all the people like us struggling to learn more, get that new hot or well saught after accreditation for whatever it is that we are after. If there is no demand for we go to school for where we live and you don't want to move to where those skills or certifications are wanted…it is the same as having skills and wanting to live in a small northern town but not being able to make a living there. It sure makes it tough to pick a major or a vocational certificate sometimes. Two of my pals have Masters Degrees and they make as much as me, Mister no degree. Most of the small towns in upper lower peninsula that I have visited have seasonal type jobs, aside from if they have a hospital or something like that needing Doctors and highly trained people like that. Most of what I see is grocery, diners & fast food, retail (maybe they will have a Wal-Mart or K-Mart), a few gas stations and party stores, etc. I know that would not make me happy, I did that when I was young and hated it then. And it would be waste of skills and denying what I enjoy doing and eventually I would leave and that would not be right for either party. For example, let’s say that you study and take all your tests to become a Cisco Certified CCIE. CCIE is Cisco's highest certificate when it comes to working with Cisco Routers, Switches, and TCP/IP technologies. This is a highly desired certificate for companies that use that tech (telecom, internet service providers, big companies with big internal computer IP networks, healthcare, banks, etc). But the problem is that if you live in Houghton Lake MI and you love the area and will not leave, there is not any call for a CCIE there. The problem seems that nobody wants or needs skilled labor in these beautiful small towns. Some places like Denver or I guess more closely Boulder have become tech hot spots that exploded because they were close to or inside recreation areas. A great example would be the large datacenters and companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are building in the eastern WA town of Quincy. Nobody ever heard of Quincy WA before that. It was mostly agricultural. Now it is a technical oasis. But it seems for the most part, if you want the big money and a nice house you must commute to the big city and fight traffic every day and actually spend less time with the ones you love just to take care of them. If you can get by working in a party store and never feel a calling to do more than that for a job and are totally fulfilled in other ways, there is nothing wrong with that at all. Sometimes I am envious. To quote the great Bob Ritchie: “With a wife and kids at home, a job somewhere on some assembly line, I wish I had that life, I bet you wish you had mine”.

Let me ask some of the folks that are presently living in Michigan “today”. I heard that Traverse City has a small tech community, is this so? I heard that there are several small VOIP (Voice Over IP) companies. I find nothing to show this. I know that there is a company in Fort Myers FL called Apollo Health Care Systems that is headquartered out of Traverse City MI and they have some tech up there, but that is all I have ever heard of being in Traverse City as far as tech. I am finding it more than tough to find any real resources online to show any kind of tech jobs in the northern lower peninsula of MI, or even away from Southfield MI. I can prove it…if you go to any job-site (pick any one…say CareerBuilder, Monster, Jobster, Dice, The Ladders) and enter the word Linux and Traverse City, all I get back is "that word did not appear in any positions in this area...but try these matches for that area". Then the systems return tons of elderly care or in-home nursing jobs. Those are important jobs too, but not ones I would be good at. I find it impossible that in a State the size of Michigan (the place I love) that there are absolutely no jobs that require knowledge of Linux. Proof of this is that Michigan is home to MERIT Network Inc in Ann Arbor; these are the folks that run RADB (http://www.ra.net) the Internet Routing Assets Database/Registry. This global database is what every major ISP, phone company, wireless provider, telecom carrier, and large companies that has a large IP network uses to obtain and list IP traffic routing policies for everyone else. It all runs on BSD UNIX or some distribution of the free operating system Linux. So with smart folks like that in Michigan, and operations like that in Michigan, how can there be no Linux jobs there in Michigan? That is absolutely incredible to me.

Years ago one the smartest and most ambitious people I knew retired from the Navy. I saw him years later pumping gas in Oregon. He did not remember me, but I knew him instantly. I asked why he was pumping gas, did he own the place and decided to take an entrepreneurial path? No, he said there was not much use for a nuclear engineer where he wanted to live. He was as happy as a clam living there and pumping people’s gas 5 days a week. Another nuclear trained person I know is an ordained minister in Arizona. When I met him his was a data analyst.

Here's an IT job in Grand Rapids for a good sized construction company:

Information Technology Administrator - Rockford Construction (http://www.rockfordconstruction.com/careers/information-technology-administrator - broken link)

I don't see Linux anywhere in the description, though. I'm not IT versed, so I don't know if it's anything you're qualified for. You can easily live in a rural lakeside community and commute to Grand Rapids (Rockford Construction is near the airport on the far SE side).