45 replies to this topic

[polarmate]

My bf works in Montvale.
They're all phony and try to sound high-class. It's obnoxious. Not an area I'm terribly comfortable...

Don't blame you, at all!!

My boyfriend's originally from Buffalo, and I'm from upstate NY-- I mean way upstate. I mean, well, relatively upstate: Troy, NY, a bit northeast of Albany.

He he, dragonlady, if there was a competition to be more upstate... I was even more upstate than Troy. Heard of Chestertown? It's 25 mins north of Glens Falls. Were you at RPI?

I love my iMac

Have fun with it. I want an iMac but I think I might settle for a reasonably high-powered telescope...before Mars wanes on me. It's still gorgeous.

[dragonlady7]

Oh, sure, Chestertown.
I was not at RPI, I was born there! I went to school out at U of Rochester, NY-- 4 hours straight west, directly into the lake-effect snow zone. Fun fun!
I am a born and raised native of north Troy. My mother was from Niskayuna, and lived in Glens Falls for a time... I've been doing some genealogy and ancestors of mine settled in the Berne/Knox area (not far from Schenectady) as early as 1720. So... A local girl, am I. I went to Emma Willard School in Troy for high school. So I should be comfortable in "upscale" areas (it's a private girls' school), but oddly, I'm not. Even Westchester is too tony for me. I've really become at home in Buffalo lately and would love to relocate there, but there are no jobs. If I can work from home, then we only have to find one job-- but Dave spent nearly a year looking for a job as a software engineer out there, and found nothing. Hence the move to pseudo-posh NJ.
I spent some time up in Newcomb, so that trumps Chestertown as being upstate, but it also had no running water and no heat, so that was a long-weekends-only proposition. Beautiful country. Another place I'd love to relocate.
My small hometown is actually called Schaghticoke (don't get many results in Google, for that, but my people don't show up until the 4th one or so... The Great Schaghticoke Fair!) and is one of those places that is genuinely quaint, in that they don't know they're quaint and have no idea how to capitalize on it. Down here if towns are like that it's on purpose and is heavily moderated by the town's tourist board. Up there, the closest thing they have to a tourist board is my mom, the Town Historian, who makes exhibits for the county fair about the flax mills in Schaghticoke in the 1840s...

I dunno, can a high-powered telescope open all your bookmarks in tabs for you automatically when you start up? Or collate your entire music collection by any of 30 sorting criteria? (I only just figured out "by date added" so now I can listen to qwerty's neutral milk hotel mp3 cd in its entirety in the proper order without re-loading the CD.) Or sort your entire photograph collection out for you and make slideshows automatically? And does it wuv you?
My computer wuvs me.

I crack up every time I see the sign that says "Ho Ho Kus". "Mahwah" gives me the giggles too. But what would fill me with blind rage was late nights coming back from a 400 mile drive from Buffalo, and ending up in the netherworld of central NJ, lost in the maze of "The Oranges". Yes, New Jersey is so freaking dumb that they named an entire SERIES of towns "Orange". So, there's North Orange, Central Orange, South Orange, East Orange... and the highway signs merely refer to them as The Oranges. Come on. I would sooner eat a thumbtack sandwich than live in An Orange. ARGH.
It's bad enough that my current town is hyphenated and pretentious.

[torka]

But what would fill me with blind rage was late nights coming back from a 400 mile drive from Buffalo, and ending up in the netherworld of central NJ, lost in the maze of "The Oranges". Yes, New Jersey is so freaking dumb that they named an entire SERIES of towns "Orange". So, there's North Orange, Central Orange, South Orange, East Orange... and the highway signs merely refer to them as The Oranges. Come on. I would sooner eat a thumbtack sandwich than live in An Orange. ARGH.

Ah, but The Oranges aren't in central NJ. West Orange is right smack up against Montclair, within spitting distance of NYC, which puts them squarely in northern NJ. There are only four: Orange, West Orange, East Orange and South Orange. For some reason, there has never been a North Orange. *shrug*

At least, that's where things were when I lived there. We moved down here about 3.5 years ago, so things may have changed. Although you'd think if anything significant had happened, my in-laws, who live in Verona, would have mentioned it...

Actually, when I first moved to NJ, I lived in West Orange for about 10 months or so. It wasn't a bad town. Crowded, to be sure, but that pretty much applies to most towns in northern NJ. Several years later, I found myself living in Jersey City, and longing for the relatively wide-open spaces of West Orange, Verona, and Cedar Grove...

Changing the subject only slightly, there was a comedian whose name eludes me at the moment who used to do a routine about town names in NJ that sounded dirty, even though they weren't. Cherry Hill... Point Pleasant... Eatontown... Bound Brook (oooh, kinky!)... Union...

--Torka

[qwerty]

The town in which I grew up was split into many unnecessarily-named units (although I think the various and sundry Oranges are in fact genuinely separate entities). We had Roslyn Village, Roslyn Heights, Roslyn Harbor, Roslyn Estates, Roslyn Highlands, and probably a few others. I've blocked it from my memory.

The place does have a certain history, though -- back in the days of the American Revolution, when it was still called Hempstead Harbor, it was the only Tory stronghold in the area. When Washington was on his way to NY for his inauguration he stopped off there, I assume to thumb his nose at the losers. There's a restaurant in town called the George Washington Manor, with a bench in the reception area that's labelled "George Washington sat here." (They don't bother mentioning why.)

[dragonlady7]

By the time we got to The Oranges, we had been on the road for about seven hours, so I couldn't tell Central NJ from East Alabama. It was also invariably dark and pouring rain. Every freaking time.
So...
I think if I'm bad, and I die, that's where I'm going to go. New Jersey.
*shudder*
I didn't like Jersey City much.

>George Washington Sat Here

Knowing your history makes it all more amusing...

[torka]

I didn't like Jersey City much.

It had its good and bad points. I was there for about 4.5 years, and can honestly say I wouldn't want to move back, even with the same deal we had at the time (free rent).

Bad points, too many to mention. Alternate side of the street parking, severe overcrowding, and drug dealers for next door neighbors pretty much topped the list. I think if we'd had a garage or other off-street parking for our car, I probably would have felt somewhat more benevolent, but having to fight for parking on a daily basis does tend to wear down one's feelings of goodwill toward one's fellow humans pretty quickly.

Good points: aforementioned free rent (not available to the general public, not available to us anymore now that the family-owned home we were living in has been sold). Proximity to Hoboken (wouldn't want to live there, either, but it's a fun town in which to party and has loads of great restaurants). Easy and relatively cheap commute to Manhattan.

And, hey, at least our section of town wasn't full of snooty rich people. (We catered to a decidedly more "downscale" demographic...)

For the last year and a half or so that we were there, I was actually working in Jersey City as well as living there. We lived "up the Heights" on the top of the palisades, overlooking Hoboken down at the bottom of the cliffs and Manhattan across the way. (Aside: it was pretty cool to climb up on the roof every July 4 and watch the fireworks.) I worked down in the Newport section, right on the banks of the Hudson, developing e-learning for a financial services company. It was pretty cool; I could actually walk to/from work in under a half hour if I set my mind to it. Sometimes did if the weather was nice.

And we could see both the whole of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty from our office windows. Which for a small-town girl from South Carolina was pretty darn cool.

--Torka

[dragonlady7]

Jersey City's a weird-shaped town.
The parking does wear down the soul. We have alternate parking here, but it's only during regular work hours, so it's not so bad, and never on weekends. We have to fight a bit for parking and that's a pain. But, I don't own a car, so it hurts me less.

That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I hated taking the PATH, especially on brutally hot summer days when it was overcrowded. It was just too much. But here you'll see the stupid thing about Westchester:
PATH fare was $1.50. Metro-North fare has just been raised to $6. The Port Authority is reasonable. The MTA are freaking gougers. The subway costs $2 now. The City is getting ridiculous and if the opportunity presents itself for me to leave, I will. It's too crowded and overexpensive here. God forbid you ever, ever need to go to a grocery store, shopping mall, amusement park, or museum on a weekend-- I've been in MOSHPITS less crowded than the Palisades Mall parking lot. (At a Less Than Jake show I once picked up both of my feet at once and was still suspended in midair by the press of bodies. FYI, that happened to me yesterday at Home Depot when I ran in quickly to get some light bulbs. Oh. My. God. And people WALK just like they DRIVE-- Augh!)
I am NOT a city girl and I just can't take it. The Force is weak with this one.
I do my grocery shopping at 9 pm on Tuesdays and have learned to get by without the deli counter. I do my laundry on Wednesdays or Thursdays after 6 pm because the laundromat's crowded but not impossible then. And I don't drive *anywhere* because there's no parking.

My ambition is to find a remote cabin where I can get DSL, and live there snowbound in the mountains and get my supplies airlifted in.
OK, not quite, but the fantasy passes the time in the checkout line.

[qwerty]

I am a decidedly urban person, but not a NY person. I grew up just outside the big town and always assumed I'd end up living in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Nope. I like it up here in the provinces. We've got all the problems of NY, but to a much lesser extent, and that makes this (apart from the money) a very liveable city.

Commuting was an issue for me, though. When I used to work out in the suburbs I'd get to the train station every morning as the suburbanoids were coming in. There's something about living in a place where everyone fills in all their space and lets everyone know where their borders are -- they do the same thing when they move as a crowd. Whereas we cityfolk are accustomed to being lined up and placed into a grid, a thousand or so of them would just fill in all the space there was by spreading out and defining their own zone of the crowd. So I, attemtping to go in the other direction, would be trapped against the wall or given dirty looks when I got into the path of some happy homeowner.

[dragonlady7]

I'm not a suburbanite, either. I grew up across the street (which was unpaved, and dead-ended just beyond my house) from a cornfield. I don't like having neighbors. I can't stand the petty wars of apartment-dwellers over leaving the hall window open or not, or putting one's shoes in the hall. It's ridiculous. Adults do this? And squabbles over parking spaces? Bleh. My dog used to take naps in our road. And so did I. Commuter trains? New one on me. I commuted on foot, in Rochester and here, but facilities for pedestrians up here are absolutely ridiculous. I was hiking on paths through parks and would get attacked by hordes of over-friendly pet dogs who assumed since I was in their playground I wanted to play. That along with the total lack of sidewalks on the narrow twisty roads populated by oversized SUVs have made me a big fan of getting a ride to work from my boyfriend on his way out. So much for fitness...
And no, not a fan of the happy homeowners.

[torka]

PATH fare was $1.50.

Just to show what an old fogie I am: when I was there, PATH was $1.00. You didn't have to buy fare cards, you could just stick a buck into the turnstile.

Now, I also am given to understand that NYC subway tokens are going obsolete, and folks will have to start using Metrocards exclusively.

Man, back in my day, we carried around 10, 15 pounds of tokens in our pockets (barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways) and we were glad to do it. You whippersnappers have it so easy nowadays.

Now, where did I put my bifocals? Can somebody fetch my shawl? I feel a draft...

--Torka

[dragonlady7]

It's true, tokens are no longer accepted. It's gotta be Metrocards. End of an era. I never used the tokens anyway...

You still don't have to buy fare cards. You just stick a buck fifty in the turnstile. So, things aren't so different. But was the Light Rail around when you were there?

We've totally hijacked this thread.

[qwerty]

We've totally hijacked this thread. 

True, but the word "Mac" is in the thread's title, so I doubt many people are looking in on it

They have light rail in NY now? One of our subway lines uses "Light Rail Vehicles," although most people refer to them as "streetcars" or "trolleys". It's basically a severely undersized train that travels at street level for a portion of its route, and which starts and stops every few seconds, tossing people about (even when its underground, for some reason). Great fun.

[dragonlady7]

>severely undersized train

Yup. It's really annoying, and slow as heck-- I think its speed limit must be around 25 mph. It takes fully 45 minutes to get from Danforth to Newport, which is meaningless but is about ten minutes in a cab, just for reference.

>"Mac" is in the thread's title, so I doubt many people are looking in on it

Hey. That's what got *me* to look at the thread in the first place...

[mktgnut]

I'm on a Mac and use wordtracker all the time. It's web-based. Only caveat is I'm still on OS9, not OSX. Maybe that's the problem? Can't imagine it, though. Are you thinking of Web Position?

We have an extra PC that I run all the non-Mac Web programs on. You can also buy software called Virtual PC and run it.

[Scottie]

Welcome to the forum, mktgnut!