[jgunaratne]

The author wrote this tongue-in-cheek, but he has a point about the appeal of a low cost of living, family-oriented lifestyle in fly over country. I'm from the Midwest and this sounds like several of my friends' lives. I made a different choice than they did. After college I moved to Seattle, Silicon Valley and then New York, working at several big name tech firms. I made decent money and kept my costs as low as a could within reason. Silicon Valley and engineering culture is a lot of hype. After 15 years of working in tech and living in high cost places, I occasionally toy with the idea of cashing out and moving back home into a big, reasonably priced house, starting a family, and living off my small fortune. I suppose you always crave what you don't have.