Tell me about the Midwest - jobs, housing, etc

[ssampier]

You guys are awesome.

I'll address comments/questions reverse chronologically.

1) Texas sounds good, power not so good, especially since I'd be moving from dry-heat to wet or muggy heat. And crime sucks no matter where you live (if you are robbed or otherwise threatened, it doesn't matter the crime rate).
2) Janx, at my last job I was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, including occasionally secretary/janitor. Most of my time was spent with system administration with Windows and Linux servers. I did a little bit of network admin, too. I have been applying for system administration and network administration jobs.

I'd like to move to an area where I don't get called at home. All the job descriptions say 24/7 support. Ugh. Here are a few areas I'm exploring:

Web developer, system analyst, and project manager.

In my current career target I am looking at virtualization and security. I enjoy Virtualization, but I don't have lots of experience (last employer won't fund it).

Security pays well. I feel that security is a negative connotation ("Security guys are so negative. What if we never have an attack?"), so I don't know if I want to continue down that path.

3) What are the big business schools in Texas? I know of U of T at Austin, but I only found one in Houston.

Since I'm half-way to a fatbeard (don't like facial hair), maybe lots of good dining isn't so great after all.

Gaming sounds good. Retail is such a tough market now. Gaming retail has never been big-business.

4) Good that Texas has diverse industries. Whether this small town will make when "clean coal" becomes a reality, I don't know.
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

 

[Jdvn1]

1) Texas sounds good, power not so good, especially since I'd be moving from dry-heat to wet or muggy heat. And crime sucks no matter where you live (if you are robbed or otherwise threatened, it doesn't matter the crime rate).

Consider that heating costs are very low, and cost of living is pretty low too. Power bills aren't so good, but they're balanced by everything else. I don't know about other cities, but Houston has a very easy to use website that will help you get the cheapest power rates possible.

3) What are the big business schools in Texas? I know of U of T at Austin, but I only found one in Houston.

In Houston, the biggest ones are probably at the University of Houston and Rice University. I know UH has tons of options as far as night, weekend, and online courses, and tuition for a resident of Houston is pretty low. Dallas has SMU and UT-Dallas (dannyalcatraz said University of Dallas, but I think he meant UT-Dallas... UD is a small liberal arts Catholic school). Austin has, obviously, UT. Each of the cities have more, smaller schools, but those five are probably the main ones.

Since I'm half-way to a fatbeard (don't like facial hair), maybe lots of good dining isn't so great after all.

Hah! Well, that's your choice. There's also good healthy dining options in Houston and Austin (as in, good organic food places and diet-friendly places... I don't know of such places in Dallas, but they may exist). Houston also has, I believe, some of the cheapest good food options, since we have an amazing Chinatown. My Chinese friends tell me its as good as or better than the food in China, and it's one of the best Chinatowns in the US (I'd guess people would say NY and SF are better). Dim sum is a relatively healthy, relatively cheap, Chinese food option.

Gaming sounds good. Retail is such a tough market now. Gaming retail has never been big-business.

That's very true. But, I tend to think that the 'gaming scene' is more driven by home games than gaming stores--especially nowadays. Gaming stores will tend to have periodic events, and there may be big conventions, but most gaming groups play at home. Houston has some decent gaming stores and a couple of cool cons, but there are very few games that run at stores or at public places. And, that seems to me the case in most cities, so you have to go online and find groups. They're not hard to find, though.

4) Good that Texas has diverse industries. Whether this small town will make when "clean coal" becomes a reality, I don't know.

Personally, I don't see a big boom happening in clean coal. The big news stories, anyways, are in renewable energy sources. Wind, solar, bio-stuff, and geothermal.

 

[Janx]

Consider these interview questions:

what degrees and certs do you have?

What web languages do you know? How many years of experience? Types of projects have you worked on?

What kind of projects have you designed or managed?

How many servers have you been responsible for?

What kind of experience do you have with backup and recovery?

How many physical locations of servers did you manage?

How many users was the largest system you supported?

How big was the largest database you supported? Biggest row count? Table Count?

Are you looking for fulltime or is contract good enough?



Anyway, that's just to name a few things I would want to know (and actually need to know if I was hiring a dude or connecting him to a contact). I primarily swim in the software development world, but have to work with hardware when problems arise.

If you're looking at IT admin type roles, those are often going to be on-call or similar, because bad stuff happens 24x7, and somebody's got to fix it.

As a SW dev, PM, or architect, that's a 8-5 job, barring over-time pushes to get over a hump.


Virtualization is hot, but I'm not a full fan of it. It depends on who you are and what you're doing for it to have value.

Security is never going to stop being an issue. While its true that a lot of people in security take a brute force, just say no to any request stance, a good person knows to consider the request, and find the most secure way to solve the problem the requestor has.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

RE: Business schools

Actually, I did mean University of Dallas- that's where I got my MBA. Their strengths are in Sports & Entertainment Marketing (#2 in the nation; my MBA) and International business.

Surprisingly enough TX A&M has a highly regarded business school, or at least, they did when I was thinking about going there back in the 1980/1990s. It has ranked as high as #10 in the past.

RE: Cuisine

Yeah, its easy to eat healthy in Austin. Whole Foods is EVERYWHERE there.

And I have to agree, for whatever reason, the Chinese community in Houston is quite the force, and the Chinese restaurants there are damn good.

 

[Jdvn1]

RE: Business schools

Actually, I did mean University of Dallas- that's where I got my MBA. Their strengths are in Sports & Entertainment Marketing (#2 in the nation; my MBA) and International business.

Surprisingly enough TX A&M has a highly regarded business school, or at least, they did when I was thinking about going there back in the 1980/1990s. It has ranked as high as #10 in the past.

True, forgot to mention A&M. Didn't know that about UD, though! Neat! The people I know from there always complained about the classics they had to read. I liked UD when I visited it, but I've heard they have a lot of money problems.

RE: Cuisine

Yeah, its easy to eat healthy in Austin. Whole Foods is EVERYWHERE there.

And I have to agree, for whatever reason, the Chinese community in Houston is quite the force, and the Chinese restaurants there are damn good.

And, Whole Foods is based in Austin. They have a cool main location with ice skating during the winter, if you haven't been. They have lots of locations around TX, though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, forgot to mention A&M. Didn't know that about UD, though! Neat! The people I know from there always complained about the classics they had to read. I liked UD when I visited it, but I've heard they have a lot of money problems.

UD is all about a well-rounded education, at all levels. Even though I had to take ethics for my undergrad degree (Philosophy/Econ) and have to take annual ethics courses to maintain my law license, I still had to take one for my MBA.

Haven't heard anything about money problems. At one point, they were in the running for W's Presidential library, but due to religious politics (UD is still strongly connected to the Catholic Church) and some pre-existing connections to SMU, SMU won out. (UD was seriously the better location...but that's a different discussion.)

The campaign to land that library may have caused them some short-term budgetary tightness.

And, Whole Foods is based in Austin. They have a cool main location with ice skating during the winter, if you haven't been. They have lots of locations around TX, though.

True and true.

We do have a few here in the Metroplex.

In Austin, though, they're almost as common as Wal-Marts and Starbucks.