So Much To Do

Hectic Days Await Me,

Now that my departure date is approaching imminent I realize that I'm vastly under prepared for the task that I'm taking on. I'm leaving people for a year, and I know that upon my return I will be out of touch with all but a handful of them for the rest of my life (until the reunion). This is a sad reality, but it is reality so I'm not gonna fight it. I have had some excellent memories and look forward to creating better ones. Whatever may come I will miss my friends and am trying to say goodbye to them in a befitting manner. I love Nat dearly and it is also stressing to think that I may be screwing up this awesome love -- I hope I'm providing insight and opportunity for self knowledge which I hope inevitably strengthens our relationship not the other way around. Time will tell. I have finally moved almost everything out of my apartment. Tables, food and drinks are still there for my poker tournament, as well as a couch and file cabinet that will need to get moved out soon (Friday before my work party?) I've moved all computer junk to my parents to capitalize on being closer to my friends and freeloading on their internet -- AWESOME! While I was cleaning out my apartment I made the realization that I don't have my passport, this was such a relief to me. I was starting to feel like I didn't have enough to do -- but psyche! Life threw me another bone, thanks buddy! So I had to head down to the local passport application office at USPS and submit my forms and my entire checkbook. Ouch -- talk about a costly mistake. All is OK now and Passport should arrive July 12-13 in time for my parents to overnight it to San Diego. Phew!

So I went home and cried about being poor and as I did I found an incredibly cool tool called Google Earth (formerly Keyhole, http://earth.google.com/) which is essentially a compilation of Satellite Imagery that you can peruse at your looking pleasure. The cool thing about this is the GUI and vast detail -- Google is really an amazing source for data. I'm begining to think that guerilla fighters are going to use google to overthrow us: search for how to make weapons, get fake ids, and learn military tactics; Recruit through Gmail; and find Targets of Interest and best attack modes through Google Earth - Scary.

Anywho, this 80 dollar program that CNN and Fox News have used to illustrate areas of insurgency during the Iraq war is now free for a fairly potent but slightly watered-down version. I highly recomend playing with it, over about an hour I made a small film highlighting my European Trips. I would be more than hapy to show anyone interested (It comes in at 996mb so posting it online is out of the question). The quality of Cable is such that these huge images aren't even completely resolved before I move on to the next destination (It takes about 15-20 seconds to resolve more detailed images and I wanted to keep it under a GB). If you download the program I can give you the Coordinates of the basic trip plan I created - This is much more desireable as you can view what I picked and arial views of the surroundings or anywhere else in the world - It's all up to you!

1. Goto http://earth.google.com/ and download/install Google Earth
2. Goto www.willisdomain.com/trip.kmz and download my Trip file
3. Double-Click Trip.kmz to open it with Google Earth
4. Under the places menu (Left side of your screen) it will appear under Temporary Places
5. Click The arrows on the side of the folders to see subfolders and specific Destinations
6. There is a Play button on the bottom of the places menu if you want to see a slide show

Enjoy looking at the temporary plan of the countries I'm going to see (this is not all inclusive I just took one or two of the best sights in each country).

Update - you can't get Google Earth from Google as they have temporaraliy delayed downloads, but I have uploaded a copy to YouSendIt.