RLFiredancer

@mike: Jesus. MN is nowhere near that. My wife is wondering when that was that your friend got her job, as well as if you know if she had her RN (2yr) or BSN (4yr).

@mike: Awesome advice re checking out grocery prices with the faux Safeway account; that is going to be my next step in my research here. On an interesting note, a guy I work with at my school used to live in CA while he had a dumb post-college decompression job at Disneyland; he said he paid a fortune for water. That struck me as interesting, and totally squares with what you're saying.

I suppose I can use the San Carlos address to check out things like high-speed internet prices and some other stuff, too (now that you mention it). Good idea.

I'm thinking (and hoping) that my wife's starting salary as a nurse and my teacher's salary will be adequate to cover all of the necessities. This all would be totally out of the question if we didn't have the opportunity and offer on this house, though; no way a nurse and a teacher could otherwise afford that type of mortgage in that area. In fact, this whole opportunity just sort of came out of the blue, and both of our heads are spinning. It's super awesome, but a lot to take in, and we just want to make sure we can make it work before we uproot our lives in MN.

-R.

@mike: Like CA, MN is pretty strict about auto emissions, too, but I think CA takes the cake on that for the entire nation (at least as far as I understand it). We would indeed sell the second car before making the move; the advantage is that the car being sold is still a newer car, and it has been paid off for a while now. We should be able to get at least enough for it to pay off the other car. Like you said, we can always buy another car if we think we need one once we get to CA. Driving two cars across the country sounds like a bitch to boot.

Another random question for you if you don't mind (which might be sorta tough to answer): how do you think cost of living compares to elsewhere? And by that I mean like food (grocery store), going out to eat, utilities, etc. I leave out a mortgage because we will be fortunate enough not to have one; the only major expenses should be the property taxes themselves.

Thanks again man, I really appreciate the perspective. It's really helping us start to wrap our brains around everything.

-R.

@tits_matador: Thanks for the info, Matador. I'll look into what the SBAC entails specifically. Also, 2 years to tenure is good news as MN is 3 (I would be giving up my current tenure in MN, but 2 years is nothing to get it back in another state, not to mention the credit they might give me for my current 6 years of experience). Thanks for reaching out to your mom for me.

-R.

@mike: Cool man. I did notice the CalTrain stuff while I was conducting some research; the monthly pass that you mention would be a great idea if need be. The St. Paul / Minneapolis area where we currently live and where I grew up (my wife is from Portland) doesn't have much of a public transportation system, and I drive about 35-60 minutes (depending on MN's bipolar weather and traffic) each way as it is. As a matter of fact, we are considering selling my wife's car, paying off the other car, and becoming a single-car household as the Bay Area's public transit looks pretty elaborate. Not to mention that it would be a dream-come-true to not have to worry about fueling, insuring, fixing, and just worrying about two damn cars. Is that logic reasonable around the Bay Area, or am I crazy?

Overall, the transportation situation would be one of the biggest changes and learning curves from moving from the Twin Cities to the Bay Area for sure. My wife and I used the BART and Muni the last couple of times we have visited, which didn't seem too tough to get used to. I'm sure doing it on the daily would be different, though.

-R.

@mike: Thanks for the info, dude. Am I correct to see that you could take a train between San Carlos and SF relatively easily?

That would be awesome if you could get your teacher buddy to reach out to me for some teacher-specific questions. Thanks again, I really appreciate it.

-R

Hello, my wife and I will be moving from St. Paul, MN, to San Carlos, CA, this June. To make a long story short, my wife's parents are offering us a house that they have hung on to for years in San Carlos (which, according to Google Maps, looks like it's about 20 miles S of downtown SF). We are super excited, but also have no idea what to expect (we have visited the area for a few days here and there and have absolutely have fallen in love with it, but then again, any place looks like a paradise compared to the god-forsaken plains of MN).

I have been teaching English/Language Arts in MN for the past 6 years, and will most likely be transferring my MN teaching license to CA (which doesn't sound too tough to do) to continue teaching.

Could some people please give me some information regarding what it is like to teach in the state of CA? I see that CA has some interesting controversy about getting rid of the tenure process, but the research that I have done has left me more confused than educated on where CA currently comes down on teacher tenure.

Any information about what it's like to teach in CA would be greatly appreciated, but I do have some specific questions that I would appreciate responses to:

-How many years do you have to work as a probationary teacher to become tenured?

-Does anyone teach in or near San Francisco? If so, what it is like? (both good and bad).

-What types of state testing are students and teachers held accountable for?

-What sort of influence do CA teacher unions have?

Thanks in advance for your responses. Please feel free to let me know what it is like to live near SF, too; any information would be super helpful.

-R

If you received Arkham Knight as a promotional game with your NVIDIA GPU purchase, you might be able to swap it for the current promotion of MGS V (even if you have already redeemed the Arkham Knight code).

About two months ago, I bought a second GTX 970 to SLI my rig, and I was stoked to realize that I would get Arkham Knight for free in the process. After Arkham Knight on PC was a complete disaster, I just chalked it up to getting screwed by Warner Brothers. "Oh well," I thought. "Game's a bust, but I still got a sick GPU."

Just the other day, I realized that NVIDIA is now offering MGS V for free download for new GPU buyers. Because my GPU purchase was within the last couple of months, I simply jumped onto Amazon's customer support chat and asked if I could get a code for the current promotion of MGS V given how much of a documented disaster Arkham Knight was (including its removal from sale). I also argued that the free game code influenced my buying decision in the first place, and that I felt a bit burned.

The Amazon rep was super helpful, and forwarded me to the Marketing and Promotions Dept. who not only apologized profusely for Arkham Knight being such a turd, but generated me a free code for MGS V...

I was blown away by Amazon's response to this. The rep apologized up and down, and said that Amazon felt it was its responsibility to correct the issue as they refuse to hold the consumer responsbile for "poor marketing practices perpetuated by other companies..." (pretty sick burn against WB, and maybe even NVIDIA).

If you recently purchased an NVIDIA GPU and find yourself in my situation, try to contact Amazon's Marketing and Promotions Dept. and describe your situation.

Hopefully MGS V will have a smooth launch on PC.

Good luck!