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Moving to Seattle - advice?

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  • PotatoNinjaPotatoNinja Fake Gamer Goat Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Doc wrote: »
    Thanatos wrote: »
    Doc wrote: »
    grungebox wrote: »
    Okay, I have another question since in about 3 weeks I'll be deciding between the iPhone and the Palm Pre. How's the 3G coverage/speed for Sprint versus ATT in Seattle?
    AT&T wireless started out here, so their coverage in our area is really good. I've heard complaints about Sprint.
    I'm not sure whether my phone is 3G or not, but my Sprint coverage has been more or less flawless here.

    They may have improved in recent years. It was, god, 5 years ago when I heard the most complaints. Sounds like he will be okay either way.

    I have Verizon and its pretty terrible, going to switch when my contract is up. I hear good things about Sprint and AT&T by comparison.

    PotatoNinja on
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  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    grungebox wrote: »
    Subway? When's the ETA for that? Or have they not started construction yet.
    And the first person to say "five dollar footlong" gets a swift punch in the gut.
    In theory, this year. But it doesn't really run anywhere useful, just around downtown (like, most of the places it goes to you could easily walk to).

    Thanatos on
  • PotatoNinjaPotatoNinja Fake Gamer Goat Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Thanatos wrote: »
    grungebox wrote: »
    Subway? When's the ETA for that? Or have they not started construction yet.
    And the first person to say "five dollar footlong" gets a swift punch in the gut.
    In theory, this year. But it doesn't really run anywhere useful, just around downtown (like, most of the places it goes to you could easily walk to).

    Seattle Mass Transit: Building Tomorrow's Bridge to Yesterday's Future The Day After Today!

    I appreciate the downtown bus service, but I don't really see the demand for another mass transit system designed to carry people approximately 8 blocks. Is this just a tourist thing, or will some good come of the subway?

    PotatoNinja on
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  • streeverstreever Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    It snows a lot over here, and rains too :D Just buy rain gear !!! You'll get there super dry. (I'm going to be honest, I'm kind of a fanatic about biking, so take it with a grain of salt!)

    streever on
  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    streever wrote: »
    It snows a lot over here, and rains too :D Just buy rain gear !!! You'll get there super dry. (I'm going to be honest, I'm kind of a fanatic about biking, so take it with a grain of salt!)
    It does not snow anywhere close to "a lot" here. It doesn't even snow "a little," here. It barely snows here. Yeah, we had a ten-year winter this year, but I wouldn't expect to see anything like that again anytime soon.

    Thanatos on
  • PotatoNinjaPotatoNinja Fake Gamer Goat Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    I moved to Seattle from Minnesota. You bastards have no idea what "winter" is like. No idea.

    Do invest in rain gear and an umbrella or two. Seattle can be a pretty moist city.

    PotatoNinja on
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  • DocDoc Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2009
    Though the umbrella will give you away as a recent transplant

    Doc on
  • capnricocapnrico Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Moist is a good word for it. As far as snow, we usually get one, maybe two good snows a year, they shut the city down, and they're usually the type that are gone by, like, the next day. This year was a huge fluke. (I lived in upstate New York, now THAT'S some snow!)

    Best kept secret in Seattle, though, is that our spring and summers are friggin GORGEOUS.

    I can also vouch for Sprint, I travel all around the Seattle metro area for work, and I've never had an issue with coverage.

    capnrico on
  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    capnrico wrote: »
    Moist is a good word for it. As far as snow, we usually get one, maybe two good snows a year, they shut the city down, and they're usually the type that are gone by, like, the next day. This year was a huge fluke. (I lived in upstate New York, now THAT'S some snow!)

    Best kept secret in Seattle, though, is that our spring and summers are friggin GORGEOUS.

    I can also vouch for Sprint, I travel all around the Seattle metro area for work, and I've never had an issue with coverage.
    He is full of lies. It rains here all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. It definitely isn't 70 degrees and beautiful here right now.

    Thanatos on
  • capnricocapnrico Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Thanatos wrote: »
    capnrico wrote: »
    Moist is a good word for it. As far as snow, we usually get one, maybe two good snows a year, they shut the city down, and they're usually the type that are gone by, like, the next day. This year was a huge fluke. (I lived in upstate New York, now THAT'S some snow!)

    Best kept secret in Seattle, though, is that our spring and summers are friggin GORGEOUS.

    I can also vouch for Sprint, I travel all around the Seattle metro area for work, and I've never had an issue with coverage.
    He is full of lies. It rains here all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. It definitely isn't 70 degrees and beautiful here right now.

    That is totally what I meant to say.
    I'm terrible at keeping secrets

    capnrico on
  • grungeboxgrungebox Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Thanatos wrote: »
    capnrico wrote: »
    Moist is a good word for it. As far as snow, we usually get one, maybe two good snows a year, they shut the city down, and they're usually the type that are gone by, like, the next day. This year was a huge fluke. (I lived in upstate New York, now THAT'S some snow!)

    Best kept secret in Seattle, though, is that our spring and summers are friggin GORGEOUS.

    I can also vouch for Sprint, I travel all around the Seattle metro area for work, and I've never had an issue with coverage.
    He is full of lies. It rains here all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. It definitely isn't 70 degrees and beautiful here right now.

    No umbrella? Do people just tough out the rain or something? I know it's not exactly raining cats and dogs in Seattle, but I figure rain is still rain and being wet still sucks.

    But I'm guessing I can leave my heavy coats at home if it never snows, right? How cold does it get normally in the winter, mid-40's?

    grungebox on
    Quail is just hipster chicken
  • DocDoc Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2009
    We either tough it out in the rain or wear a hooded jacket.

    It definitely gets below freezing every year. It's just uncommon that it gets below freezing on a day when we get precipitation, since the cloud cover typically keeps things a bit warmer. Upper 20s is as cold as I'd plan on things getting.

    Doc on
  • Seattle ThreadSeattle Thread Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Umbrellas are for tourists.

    Regarding the snow, it's been said a few times already with our ridiculously-out-of-the-norm winter weather this past year, but when it hits the city is crippled. Seattle is somewhere in the neighborhood of 9000% hills, and our few snowplows have ineffectual rubber blades. And our equally ineffectual city council feels that anything but some kind of treated sand mix is damaging to the environment.

    Here's the skinny on the subway, a/k/a the Light Rail. Right now it's still slated to open sometime in 2009, after roughly five years of construction. Upon opening day, it will only serve a Downtown-to-SeaTac airport route, with stops along Martin Luther King Jr. Way (which is a main highway through the south end). For me and my peers, that means zero. However, construction has begun on the next leg, which is Downtown-to-the U-District through Capitol Hill. This leg is slated to open in 2014, I believe. I know that the actual tunneling from Capitol Hill to Downtown won't even begin until 2011. After that, preliminary plans to connect the U-District to Ballard are supposedly underway, but given the current track record I wouldn't see that opening until 2019.

    But our Metro bus system is good enough to get you anywhere in the city, for just about any place. It becomes problematic when traffic thickens up during rush hours, but that's unavoidable. Seattle has notoriously bad traffic--partially because the lack of city planning back in the day has made a mess of many intersections, partially because I-5 runs right through the center of the city, and partly because we have two large lakes, a shipping canal and countless hills to navigate around. You really are better off carless--I sold mine within a month of moving in-city, and that was nine years ago.

    Considering that the Light Rail construction is going to affect a lot of downtown traffic (they have the Olive Way exit on Northbound I-5 closed for an entire year!), and it's only going to get worse when they tear down the viaduct, and not to mention the large amount of commercial construction still happening all over the city... well, it's going to be a little hairy for a few years. But a bike and a bus pass will still get you around well enough--did anyone mention that you can load your bike onto the front of any bus?--and it's still an awesome city.

    Seattle Thread on
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  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    grungebox wrote: »
    Thanatos wrote: »
    capnrico wrote: »
    Moist is a good word for it. As far as snow, we usually get one, maybe two good snows a year, they shut the city down, and they're usually the type that are gone by, like, the next day. This year was a huge fluke. (I lived in upstate New York, now THAT'S some snow!)

    Best kept secret in Seattle, though, is that our spring and summers are friggin GORGEOUS.

    I can also vouch for Sprint, I travel all around the Seattle metro area for work, and I've never had an issue with coverage.
    He is full of lies. It rains here all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. It definitely isn't 70 degrees and beautiful here right now.
    No umbrella? Do people just tough out the rain or something? I know it's not exactly raining cats and dogs in Seattle, but I figure rain is still rain and being wet still sucks.

    But I'm guessing I can leave my heavy coats at home if it never snows, right? How cold does it get normally in the winter, mid-40's?
    About half the time it isn't actually raining, it's just really damp. Like, think fog, but wetter. Honestly, an umbrella just doesn't do much in that.

    Thanatos on
  • Aurora BorealisAurora Borealis runs and runs and runs away BrooklynRegistered User regular
    edited May 2009
    It's not the same rain as east coast rain at all. Before I moved east I thought that the thing where thunder claps and then it suddenly starts pouring only happened in cartoons. Because I grew up on the west coast and I had never seen it happen.
    If it's rainy that day, it's rainy all day. Wear a hoodie. And you will quickly learn to judge the weather by how dry the sidewalks are.

    Aurora Borealis on
  • grungeboxgrungebox Registered User regular
    edited July 2009
    Just an update. Found a place, decided to find a roommate to save a little bit of money. Thanks for all the help (especially Thanatos). Now that I have about 2 weeks left, I need to figure out some stuff to do. Namely, I'm planning to drive up there with my gf over the course of a week since I need my car at some point...at least at first. I've never taken a multi-day road trip, so I could use some basic help.

    1) My 99 Civic is hitting 140k miles. What should I have the mechanics check out? I know I need to replace the timing belt, check the freon/AC crap, replace the shocks, etc...but what else should I look out for? I know more about Sex and the City than I do about cars, and having not seen an episode, so that should tell you something. And, um, will my car make it or should I just hurry and buy a new car quick? If there's a car buyback program in Washington, let me know. In Texas, you get $3k towards the purchase of a new car if you trade in a 10-year old car, and KBB fair-condition value for private party sale is ~$3.6k.

    2) Recommended routes? I was thinking Dallas-Denver-Yellowstone-Washington or Santa Fe-Vegas-California-Washington, depending on if my brother will be in Denver or not. Anyone driven either? I was hoping to spend a day in Denver, maybe part of a day in Yellowstone...or a day in Santa Fe and maybe a day in Vegas. The Denver path seems like it'd be less boring, but whichever has more cities is probably the winner since I like lots of breaks while driving.

    3) General road trip advice? What to bring in terms of supplies, tips for staying awake on the road, that sort of thing. Keep in mind that I am planning to avoid driving at night anywhere mostly because of the fear of being stranded in the middle of nowhere overnight; it almost happened a few years ago after Hurricane Rita, so I'm a little paranoid.

    Any help appreciated. Thanks!

    grungebox on
    Quail is just hipster chicken
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