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[AlohaDawg]

Hemmorhagic fever diseases never really go away and there's more of them than just Ebola. Gorillas in parts of Africa are being wiped out too.

Linky

[theinevitable]

today, I watched an almost-3-hour-long film, in Sicilian with bad subtitles, that was basically a reel of communist propaganda. Maybe I would have liked it more if I hadn't been sneezing/coughing/eyes-runny/tummy-rumbly/head-achey the whole time. but, seriously, fuck. We get it. the family is destitute and nothing they do will ever make things better. OK, you're looking into the camera and saying "we have to unite." I got it the first time.
Thank you, La Terra Trema. Thanks for taking the time to explain these things to me.

[AlohaDawg]

...discern among over 100 job openings at PHS/NIH in Rockville, MD and apply for as many as I can in my grade and series.

Anyone here know anything about Rockville, MD besides that Michael Stipe says I shouldn't go back there?

[V-Adore]

You also shouldn't waste another year.

Or so Stipe says.

[wombat]

...discern among over 100 job openings at PHS/NIH in Rockville, MD and apply for as many as I can in my grade and series.

Anyone here know anything about Rockville, MD besides that Michael Stipe says I shouldn't go back there?

When and why did he say this?

Rockville is a suburb of Washington DC. You should come live here!

But seriously... It's very expensive here, but perhaps not as bad as Hawaii. If you worked in Rockville I suppose you could live farther out which is somewhat cheaper. The climate sucks. There is a fair amount of culture and civilization - there are more interesting authentic ethnic restaurants in the DC suburbs than in the city. You are close enough to go downtown and do all the free Smithsonian museums and so on.

What else do you want to know? I don't know much about schools, but it's a rich county. It seems like that so much a local question of exactly where you end up living.

Oh, and the traffic sucks. We just got rated second worst in the country. But if you know where you're going to work, you can pick a place to live that works around it. I would consider that a high priority if you want to live here.

[side_show]

Today I'm gonna try to avoid getting a swelled head due to my invite to an artistic leaders summit.  Nice to be flown half way across the country to meet with the best in my field.  If they keep putting me on a level playing field with such brilliant people, I'm gonna start believing I'm good at making art. 

Also, the most prestigious award given to a theatre artists in my country?  I got to hold one (someone else's) in my hands today.  It has a nice, solid weight to it.  My theory is that any serious award should be heavy enough and solid enough to bludgeon someone to death with, and the Dora is all those things.

[CortJstr]

Rockville has a Penzey's, So it's got that going for it. I've been told that in Maryland adding "North" to a town name is code for "expensive and pretentious." Don't pick a work/home combination that requires travel on 270, because it is one of the 3 single suckiest roads during rush hour.

I believe that it's cheaper to live in MD than VA because of VA's personal property tax but VA jobs generally have higher pay which leads to a lot of our traffic woes. MD is also left leaning, although their law banning interracial marriage was just upheld.

Wombat, there's an old REM song called Don't Go Back to Rockville. It's pretty well known but I don't know what Rockville it's referring to.

[wombat]

Smells, don't get so famous that you don't have time to post anymore!

[jaydub]

Rockville has a Penzey's, So it's got that going for it. I've been told that in Maryland adding "North" to a town name is code for "expensive and pretentious."

In California, we add "East" to things to indicate that they are low.  Why the people who live in East Palo Alto, East L.A. and so forth put up with this is beyond me.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Wombat, there's an old REM song called Don't Go Back to Rockville. It's pretty well known but I don't know what Rockville it's referring to.

That would indeed be Rockville MD.  Mike Mills had a girlfriend at UGa who was from Rockville, and was going to go back home for the summer, but he wanted her to stay.
http://www.hermenaut.com/a135.shtml

What wombat said about Rockville is spot on.  Hellish traffic, but lots of really good ethnic restaurants and markets.

[linnea]

...Finish setting up my dad's new printer. He gets unreasonably pissed when it comes to new technology, so I'm helping him out. He got an HP Photosmart C5180 All-In-One, since he previously owned a Canon Pixma, which has the unfortunate planned obsolescence feature of taking 4 shits and dying after its "waste ink receptacle" is filled. The Pixma printer says that it needs to be serviced, but Canon does not make or sell waste ink receptacles. For a while we cobbled it together by using tissues and paper towels to absorb excess ink, but apparently that won't work anymore. It died spectacularly this morning while I was helping him with mapping projects.

I am hell of tempted to blow the Phoenix paycheck on a new computer laptop ($700) or a big-ass iPod ($250)...or go to the Cherry Creek Mall and see if they have any L'Artisan ($110), Frédéric Malle ($180), or Serge Lutens ($245) perfume. But the voice of reason tells me to save my money.

[AlohaDawg]

So maybe someone should split this off to a Rockville topic.

The Jobs I'm looking at are GS-13/14 jobs. If I were hired, I would start out at just about 80,000 a year, with yearly cost-of-living of between 1.5-4% and step increases of a couple thousand a year for the first three years and then every two years after that. Eventually the jump to GS-14 would at at least another 5K with bigger steps.

I don't know how big the county is or the town, but I would like to live in the same town I work or one town over if it's possible. I hate to sit in traffic, and it sounds like the traffic is worse than the traffic was in Chicago. I don't mind buses, trains or whatever, though.

The median income in the county according to Wikipedia is something just under 60,000. I never know how to gauge this, I'm way ahead of that in Kailua and we are still getting killed. What are rents like? How about home prices? What suburbs lay around Rockville?

Thanks DC people, this is helpful. When I was in HS I told myself one day I would live in/around DC. Maybe I can accomplish one youthful goal before I die.

[wombat]

Wait, isn't NIH on the Metro? You might not have to drive at all if you worked it right.  Although if you live farther out most of the metro stops are the sort that you drive to rather than walk to, but at least that's less driving.

Towns that are more or less adjacent to where NIH is are Bethesda and Chevy Chase, which are expensive. I think Rockville itself stretches pretty far north - I think there are parts of close-in Silver Spring that are closer to NIH than places that are legally in Rockville, and might be cheaper.

I think it must be tough to live in this area on 60,000. I don't know about home price statistics, but if you're searching, it might help to know that the towns are in Montgomery County.

[CortJstr]

If it helps Montgomery County has the best schools in the DC area, IIRC.

Traffic around here is 2nd worst, but that's mainly because of people who A) live in the exurbs but commute to inside the Beltway or B) commute between MD and VA. There are only 3 crossings over the Potomac river, so all 3 act as huge choke points.

In Arlington a condo near the metro will run you ~$400K for a one bedroom. As I understand it Arlington and Montgomery counties are pretty comparable and both posted a 10% housing price increase over last summer, even with the mortgage/housing slump.

The nice thing about the area is that it's just crawling with jobs, especially government. I just heard on the radio that $80K is the median income for a federal employee in the metro area.

[theinevitable]

last night, my roommate asked to borrow my guitar so that he could practice before his guitar class today.

this morning, I was woken by the sound of a heartily played acoustic guitar. I feel like, in college, 9 AM is too early to be making loud noises right outside someone's bedroom.

today, I have had a really annoying unproductive, shallow cough (the kind of out-of-breath cough that I associate with smokers and old men).