My career requires a lot of travel and relocation, so I've lived and spent a lot of time in more places than I'd like. I have lived in Baton Rouge, Memphis, Pittsburgh and I've been on some pretty big projects in Atlanta, Houston, OKC, and San Mateo.

- I hated Memphis when I moved there. It grew me a lot. Memphis has some great suburbs and some very good food. The zoo is awesome, and there are more fortune 500 companies in the Memphis metro than in the entire state of Louisiana. The people are top notch and the suburban school districts are very competitive. There are some serious crime problems in Memphis proper though. To me, Memphis is the dictionary definition of a southern city - and that is mostly a compliment.

- Houston seems like a very laid back place for such a large town. It's very business focused and the costs of living is reasonable. I prefer it to Atlanta. The food and entertainment are both very good, and I like the proximity to Louisiana. The opportunity there for young people is hard to beat.

- Pittsburgh is awesome, but the food sucks. People aren't as friendly as the south, but they are generally nice. The city has reinvented itself from a manufacturing center to a tech and medical center, but the surrounding areas are sometimes pretty depressing with the loss of steel and coal jobs. I've been here over 2 years and it still doesn't feel like home - and I still get lost in town. It's also weird to me to have so many adults this deep into professional sports instead of college sports. It's definitely a northern city in that respect.

- OKC was actually a really nice city to me. The people seemed much friendlier and down to earth than Dallas. It's pretty easy to get good food. People seem to be in reasonably good shape. The airport is a "just right" size. It was even more conservative than the posh "east of Memphis" suburbs of Collierville and Germantown. Tornado season was hairy, and there was one minor earthquake when I was in town.

- San Mateo is awesome but the costs of living there makes it not even worth discussing. There may as well be a 100' tall wall around it if you don't make well over $350K/year. If you have the high income, San Mateo and Burlingame are excellent places to live. The food and entertainment was awesome, and it was very easy to get into San Francisco. My employer wants me to move there, but I'm resisting because of the costs of living. Some people there have batshit-crazy politics though.

- I'd move to Baton Rouge (or Lafayette) if the opportunity presented itself. I don't like the hurricanes or the politics, but Baton Rouge had the youngest feel than any of the places I have spent a lot of time in except San Mateo. It had a lot that made it a traditional southern city, but there was also a lot of "south Louisiana" in it as well. It felt like home to me and still does. I wish it had better highway infrastructure and a bigger airport.

This post was edited on 8/5/17 at 3:24 pm