Re: [California, Uber Alles]

[Elna Tymes <Etymes -at- LTS -dot- com>]

Sour grapes.  A lot of the criticism here and other places about 
California amounts simply to sour grapes.  A lot more reflects both a 
lack of facts about real conditions in California and very real 
preferences for other places.

I don't object to people preferring other lifestyles or other locales or 
 other things that matter to them. What I do object to is people using 
those different preferences as the springboard for criticizing 
California, and using misinformation and exaggeration as the 
justification.  The last few posts on the subject have been good examples:

1. Rolling blackouts.  We had four or five of those last year, if I 
remember correctly.  Our business never got hit at all.  The areas that 
got a blackout generally had a period of from two to five hours being 
without power. We didn't have ice storms that cut off power for days, 
and we didn't have tornadoes or hurricanes that wiped out whole 
communities.  Part of the problem was that California hadn't built any 
new generators in over 10 years; since last summer three new generators 
have come online and another 12 are due online over the next 2.5 years. 
Some of the large power consumers, such as Intel's chip plants, quickly 
helped form policies about length of power outages, early warning, etc., 
so that they could use backup generators that they had anyway.  We could 
also talk about Enron and the other power sellers forming an illegal 
agreement to hold California hostage to high rates, but that's another 
issue and one that's in the early stages of plowing through the courts.

2. Three-hour commutes.  There are some examples of this, but a long 
commute is far from the norm. You rarely spend two hours on a 20-mile 
commute unless you're stuck behind a traffic accident or you choose to 
drive in the worst of peak times. Some people choose to live in outlying 
areas for a variety of reasons, but a three hour commute would be like 
living in Philadelphia and commuting to Washington DC, or living in 
Madison and commuting to Chicago, or living in Austin and commuting to 
Dallas, or even living in Portland and commuting to Seattle (or vice 
versa).  But yes, there are people who make quality of life decisions 
that result in such a commute.

3. >...the smog covered valleys of San Francisco..."

Let's be real here.  Smog is a fact of life in most metro areas around 
the country. Even Portland, Andrew. (I've been there, many times.) 
According to EPA reports, northern California had fewer than 1% of its 
days in 2001 as smoggy beyond EPA-acceptable levels, and has dropped 
this level every year for the last decade.

4. Outrageous housing prices. No question here - housing costs more here 
than most places.  However what's going on is simply a case of demand 
chasing supply.  Silicon Valley is still one of the major job engines of 
the world, even with this recession. If you want what this area offers, 
you have to put up with the housing prices.  The same could be said of 
other places - not long ago New York and environs, Honolulu, Hong Kong, 
 London, etc.

5. Levels of taxes.  Sure, California has taxes.  Would you prefer doing 
business in Massachusetts, which has one of the highest tax levels in 
the country?  I covered this in an earlier posting.

6. > The notion that Silicon Valley is THE place to be strikes me
> as rather arrogant considering the abundance of technology
> firms elsewhere around the nation (and world).

From an outsider perspective, yes it must look that way. However, when 
you add up the number of technology companies, the number of jobs those 
technology companies create, and the interaction between town and gown 
that continually results in new company (and job) creation, simply 
stating the facts looks like arrogance.  Of course there are technology 
firms elsewhere - I'm not denying that by any means.  What I've been 
saying is that Silicon Valley has the greatest *concentration* of 
technology companies.

How is all of this relevant to technical writing?  Mostly it has to do 
with job creation and hence opportunities to practice what we do.  Right 
now a recession is preventing a lot of us from doing what we want to do, 
in the areas we prefer.  My point in responding to Andrew's snide 
comments about California is to point out that, historically, California 
has created more tech writing jobs than any other US locale, and that 
when the recession ends, it will likely continue to do so.  And my 
opinions are based on a lot of facts (which doesn't make my opinion any 
better, just more credible).

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems





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