Why is Maine a good place to move to? (Portland: apartments, rental homes)

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by WhereDoIBelong

The graphs on this website show the weather for every state/city and it shows about 50% of the days are cloudy and about another 20% of the days are partly cloudy.
While I should have used another word instead of gloomy, I don't think I can live with this low level of not seeing the sun and sky on a regular basis - maybe I'm wrong and when I get up there I won't think its so bad or in the way I imagine it is. ...

The difference may be between what you experience and what the forecasters are calling for.

When I experience clear skies with a few small patches of clouds that pass through, my experience of the day is bright and sunny. But you are correct, the forecasters will call that partly cloudy.

To me it is the glare from the snow that makes it near blinding.

I grew up in the Central Valley of California, where the clouds roll in each fall. But they can not climb the 14,000 foot Sierra Nevada's so the clods stay in the valley until the next spring. So we would routinely have complete over-cast from September to April. The forecasts would talk about the ceiling, or how high the cloud cover would be each day [100 ft, 1,000 ft, 4,000 ft].

And then the PNW where it drizzles more often then anything else.

To my experience, living in Maine, I see sunny skies far more often than I see overcast.

[WhereDoIBelong]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

The difference may be between what you experience and what the forecasters are calling for.

When I experience clear skies with a few small patches of clouds that pass through, my experience of the day is bright and sunny. But you are correct, the forecasters will call that partly cloudy.

To me it is the glare from the snow that makes it near blinding.

I grew up in the Central Valley of California, where the clouds roll in each fall. But they can not climb the 14,000 foot Sierra Nevada's so the clods stay in the valley until the next spring. So we would routinely have complete over-cast from September to April. The forecasts would talk about the ceiling, or how high the cloud cover would be each day [100 ft, 1,000 ft, 4,000 ft].

And then the PNW where it drizzles more often then anything else.

To my experience, living in Maine, I see sunny skies far more often than I see overcast.

Thank you for clarifying that aspect.
BTW, what's PNW?

[AustinB]

Originally Posted by WhereDoIBelong

Thank you for clarifying that aspect.
BTW, what's PNW?

Pacific Northwest

[Submariner]

I was stationed on 2 subs both homeported at Subase Bangor in Washington State. Washington State / B.C. are commonly referred to as 'Pacific North-West'.

[Okeydoekey]

Northern Maine Land Man, from something you posted, it seems you live in Lincoln County. If so, have you been out to see the BLOG Cabin in Waldoboro? It's the one I would really really like to win, so I can move to Maine in style and be debt free in the process.

[atrixwolfe]

wheredoibelong - this morning we received 3 to 4 inches of snow but the sun was out and bright and it was about 22 degrees in the portland area. It was a beautiful day and I went out walking at lunch. My point is its not depressing at all.

It your looking to be out where you can't see your neighbors house, there are area's in southern maine as well as northern maine where you should be able to find a rental that fits what your looking for and out away from the city rent will be cheaper. I think based on what you've described you'd like it here.

There is a state project to get Fiber high speed internet to the rural area's of maine, so you should have the data type of connections and speed your looking for.
I'm thinking if you haven't looked at it already you can really see a lot on google earth, You'll be able to tell the rural from the populated areas and I think you'll see there are a few city type of areas possibly the size of greensboro NC but then it drops off to less populated quickly.
If you do need to work and depend on IT as by your india reference is possibly customer support or QA (I'm in the latter) consider looking 30 to 45 minutes outside portland (maines biggest city) might be worth a consideration look at gorham, windham, limerick or up by bowdionham check craig's list for rentals. Thinking if you like Maine after your here for a while and get your web site going you can then move north. or west...if you like it.
Anyway google earth will give you a good view of the various areas. I relied on it religiously when shopping from a distance.
Best of luck in your decisions and don't' let the weather scare you away....its not that bad really its beautiful if you factor in all 4 seasons!

[WhereDoIBelong]

Originally Posted by atrixwolfe

wheredoibelong - this morning we received 3 to 4 inches of snow but the sun was out and bright and it was about 22 degrees in the portland area. It was a beautiful day and I went out walking at lunch. My point is its not depressing at all.

It your looking to be out where you can't see your neighbors house, there are area's in southern maine as well as northern maine where you should be able to find a rental that fits what your looking for and out away from the city rent will be cheaper. I think based on what you've described you'd like it here.

There is a state project to get Fiber high speed internet to the rural area's of maine, so you should have the data type of connections and speed your looking for.
I'm thinking if you haven't looked at it already you can really see a lot on google earth, You'll be able to tell the rural from the populated areas and I think you'll see there are a few city type of areas possibly the size of greensboro NC but then it drops off to less populated quickly.
If you do need to work and depend on IT as by your india reference is possibly customer support or QA (I'm in the latter) consider looking 30 to 45 minutes outside portland (maines biggest city) might be worth a consideration look at gorham, windham, limerick or up by bowdionham check craig's list for rentals. Thinking if you like Maine after your here for a while and get your web site going you can then move north. or west...if you like it.
Anyway google earth will give you a good view of the various areas. I relied on it religiously when shopping from a distance.
Best of luck in your decisions and don't' let the weather scare you away....its not that bad really its beautiful if you factor in all 4 seasons!

Thank you for that info.
I spoke to AT&T about U-verse availability in Maine, but they tell me its not available and there's no prospect of them having it in the near future. Nor even any DSL.
So, they told me the only possibilities are Time Warner cable (horrible service and awful people), cellular, or something called Fairport.
I'd like to hear about what everybody else has as their internet option and how they rate their service.

Honestly, U-verse has the been the best ISP service I've had in my life.

[AustinB]

We have Fairpoint and they haven't been bad at all.

[atrixwolfe]

I have Time Warner and I'm not unhappy I stream movies, music & sometimes work from home and only get the rare occasional lag. But one of my co-workers who lives in Auburn Maine has the highspeed fiber I was talking about.
I think though this company Maine Internet ISP Carrier - Oxford Networks
Based on this PDF:
http://www.oxfordnetworks.com/pdf/Br...Disclosure.pdf it looks like the fiber is only available in Lewiston/auburn and Norway/s.paris where the speed is 30 MB Download /1 MB Upload other wise its 5MB & 1MB
But My point is this is part of the Federally funded Fiber project underway in the state so if its not there its coming to more rural areas soon.

I'll double check with him on monday and repost if I'm wrong. He's a big time online gamer, movie streamer works from home...etc its super fast.

[corgis]

We have Fairpoint and it seems to load more slowly than what we have been used to - we're in Eastport so maybe our region is slower than other places.