Bleh. I hate the F2P (aka Pay To Win) model. It's completely destroyed whatever little interest I had in Android and iOS as gaming platforms. The game is artificially gimped in order to prod you into paying for getting around the gimped parts, essentially asking you to pay NOT to play the game. I can not play the game just fine by not downloading it to begin with.
Lots of seafood. Crab cakes and other crabmeat dishes are especially popular here.
Yeah, I love Rudy's. They had them in Oklahoma, but not in Maryland. :(
I tried this a couple of times at store kiosks. Looked interesting, but I think the concept wasn't quite ready for prime time. Since then, I've become a fan of the Yakuza series. It isn't quite like Shenmue (more emphasis on adventuring/fighting and it has an almost RPG-like structure to it), but I think it fits the bill. I'd like to see the Yakuza team try a reboot of Shenmue.
I have friends in Boston (and Maine, of course), and I've been to New York City three times now. As far as the West Coast goes, I've traveled the entire length of I-5 from the Mexican border in San Diego to the Canadian border in Washington. At some point I would like to move to California, it's an amazing place.
Yeah, it's cold. Not quite as cold or snowy as New England, but it's still cold for someone used to 60-70 degrees this time of year. :)
Hey, now, in our defense, it's still a much shorter drive from MD to Maine than it is to Florida (even to Jacksonville at the FL-GA border), and Baltimore is a part of BosWash, after all. And while it isn't near as snowy here as it is in New England, it's still never been above freezing since I got here. :)
Besides, our perceptions of "west" have changed, too. When the Constitution was ratified, the "western frontier" referred to the Pittsburgh area, after all. They weren't even thinking about places like TX, AZ, or CA back then. :)
It's a new experience for me, living out here. I've visited the Northeast quite a few times over the years, but it's still a lot different than what I'm used to from places like Oklahoma, Arizona, or California. Sure is pretty though.
Cost of living is kind of a wash in a lot of ways. Housing is cheaper in Oklahoma, but Maryland is actually cheap compared to other Northeastern areas, which isn't bad for it being the wealthiest state in the country (most of said wealth being concentrated in the counties near DC, of course). As far as gas, Oklahoma has the cheapest gas in the US by quite a margin, but since I did a lot more driving in Oklahoma than I'm doing in Maryland thanks to Baltimore being less sprawling than Oklahoma City/Norman, I spend less on gas in MD. Food is actually somewhat cheaper in Maryland. Oklahoma not only has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country - the state rate is 4.5%, but the cities and counties impose their own taxes and the actual sales tax rate ends up being 9-11% - but they also tax groceries, while Maryland exempts most groceries and has a 6% sales tax rate. The auto insurance was the one big case of sticker shock I've had since I came here. Oklahoma is actually one of the more expensive places to get auto insurance thanks mostly to the weather there - tornadoes and hail are a big source of claims in OK - but 15 years of being with the same State Farm agent plus a good driving record netted me a pretty low insurance premium there. My rates doubled when I came here. I found out later that Baltimore is one of the most expensive cities for auto insurance. Oh well.
I forgot I contributed something to this.
