I was formerly from Raleigh, NC, but now live and work in Johnsonville, SC, near Myrtle Beach and Conway. I moved here because I had an offer for free land and my wife grew up here. Unfortunately I was too optimistic on the economic climate within 100 miles of Johnsonville compared to Raleigh. I hope that improves. My first real job here was unfortunately an hour long commute.
In December 2007, at the age of 40, I felt tremendously underutilized, yet overworked on tasks I didn't like doing like filling out paperwork, doing security audits, sysop work, tech support, etc. at a Fortune 500 information technology company. I preferred web development, and particularly PHP development. Unfortunately my original job doing just that was outsourced. I was told to either take a tech support job or hit the streets. So, after only one year of development with that company, I worked 5 committed years doing Linux sysop work with still a good bit of PHP work in there. Eventually they overworked me and on my 6th year I resigned.