On Nh living and commutes..

[Travis Roy]

> I've been on this list since october because of my interest in the free 
> state project.. and the ideas behind it...  now it seems the goal of 
> moving to your part of the world is a little closer.  

First let me say that I think the free state project is stupid.. But 
that's me personally.. I was just reviewing the site again to get a 
refresher and I still think it's a stupid idea..

But hey, that's me... you have fun..

My big thing is how 20k people are going to influx into NH as fast as 
you want.. on top of the normal influx of new residents, since a lot of 
communities are starting to curb growth one way or another.

> I'll be coming up 
> there for an interview in Cambridge on the 5th... and while I'm there I 
> plan to check out the area around boson.. and Salem NH.  I've worked 
> exclusively with linux since graduating in 98..  and I'm pleased to be 
> able to say that.

While working exclusively with Linux is great, it's very limiting.. I 
encourage you to get out there and start tinkering with other OSes, be 
it Windows, OSX, *BSD. You want to be at least comfortable with many 
different things. Having a strong Linux background is great, but only 
really having experience with Linux can be a bad thing since a lot of 
companies, even ones that use Linux a lot are mixed OS environments.

> I'd like to get an impression of what traffic is like between these 
> places... if anyone on list does this commute... and if it's at all 
> reasonable to expect to be able to live somewhere in NH and work in 
> cambridge. For comparison... I'm in charlotte and work downtown.. live 
> on the outskirts about 20 miles away.  Off peak that drive takes me 
> 20-30 min on the main roads.  During rush hours it is usually an hour.  
> Of course.. here we don't have any sort of mass transit...  Is it common 
> for people to commute on trains/buses?  Here the buses are so bad.. it 
> can take you 90-120 minutes just to go cross town... and you might be 
> taking your life in your own hands in dealing with some of the other 
> passengers.

Living in NH and working in Boston or just outside of Boston, unless at 
odd hours, is gonna suck. No two ways around it. 93 usually has a huge 
bottleneck at the border, and Rt. 3 is having construction in Mass. I 
worked in Chelmsford (off hours, but I saw the traffic on the other side 
of the highway) and Burlington, Mass.. Both has extremely sucky 
commutes. There are MTA trains that I know of that come to NH, but I 
could be wrong. My commute to Burlington when I worked there was about 
1.5hrs, and coming back home (Manchester, NH) was at LEAST two hours, 
sometimes 3 on holiday weekends.. NOT fun.

Your best bet would be to try to get an off hours job or something on 
the coast that you can take 101 to..

Also, don't forget, there's the Democratic National Convention coming 
up.. If you can, move AFTER that, because forget about even coming close 
to Boston while that's going on.

>  From what I've been able to find out... MA taxes are not nearly as bad 
> as they once were... so I don't think it would too bad if I ended up 
> living there... but I'm looking for a little local insight.

Living in Mass? Isn't the point of the free state project to live in NH?

Of course if you live in NH and work in MA you'll still have to pay some 
MA income tax.