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This is my last night in Minnesota. Tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Wisconsin and continue getting ready. I’ve realized that I’ve almost spent half of my life in Minnesota. Weird.

Once I leave, I’ll need to work on getting shots (Yellow Fever), travel insurance, clothes, a good bag and lots of odds and ends. I hope to have most of it taken care of in around two weeks. I’ll also need to make sure I have my banking taken care of so the bank knows that overseas transactions aren’t theft and they don’t cancel my card.

Then I’m off to Vegas then LA, then Hawaii.

I’m writing this on my new MacBook Pro. So far, its awesome.

My first computer was a Apple IIc I purchased back in 1985. It served me well through high school and college. After I graduated I purchased a Mac LC.

I think it was around 1994 when I got my first windows machine. It was a 486 from Midwest Micro running Windows 3.11. I’ve been running Windows ever since.

The original reason for buying a Windows machine was because if you wanted to program and make money doing it, you pretty much had to program for Windows/DOS. Around the late 90’s, the number of apps I was using that was exclusive to Windows was so great that there was no way I could get a Mac.

At some point, software stopped mattering. Most things I need now are all online. Firefox is available for everything. I use Gmail for my email and Google Reader for my RSS. Most of my time is spent at websites. The only game I play is World of Warcraft, which is available on Mac. Photo/video editing is as good, if not much better, on Mac than Windows.

Add the ability to run Windows on the new Intel based Macs and there really isn’t a reason not to get a Mac, other than price.

I guess I’ve come full circle and I don’t think I’m the only one. I’ll be providing more updates as I spend more time with it.

I’m living in a hotel for a few days a few blocks from my old house.

Today I’ll be taking care of stuff with the state and county (aka, tickets and water bill) as well as some other stuff I have to do before I leave.

I’ll also be buying my laptop as well as my DSLR tonight. I might get my pack today too. That is really a function of how much I can get into my car as I still have a bunch of boxes.

The deed is done. House sold. Money in the bank.

I have a few more items to put away into storage when I go back to Wisconsin, then its full steam ahead.

6am. 4 hours sleep. Only 3 or so boxes left in the house I smell foul. I’m tired. Walk-through is in 3 hours, then sign the documents and turn over the keys. Then transfer stuff to my dad’s truck. Then, I’m free.

Its 12:40am and I’m still packing stuff. I have to be out at 9am.

I totally mis-judged how much stuff I had left. I totally forgot some stuff. I got a hotel room close to my house and am moving stuff in here tonight because there is no way I could put it all in my car.

My dad is driving up tomorrow with his pickup truck. He’ll be in for a surprise when he has to deal with a bunch of heavy boxes of books.

I’m still not done and I have to be up to meet the painter by 7am.

This sucks.

My last full day in my house, and so far it has been a great day. I got the peeps at Swiftknowledge to take way all my computers and networking gear. I had the junk guy show up and haul all my crap away. The painter showed up and fixed what needed fixing. I had some other very good surprises as well.

All I have to do is box up the last few remaining things and its all done.

I can’t believe this day is almost here. I can stop focusing on tying up loose ends to focusing on moving forward and getting started.

I’ve picked a camera. I’m going with the Nikon D200. I hope to purchase it later this week.

The choice really boiled down to one thing and one thing only. GPS integration.

I’m not that sophisticated in photography to know the ins and outs of various camera settings, so the performance wasn’t that big of an issue. That being said, I did read mostly positive reviews and have seen some excellent photos taken with the D200.

The ability to integrate GPS data directly into the photo metadata is very appealing to me. As far as I know, its the only major DSLR which currently has this ability. It also requires something of a hack to make it work. I’ve found a company that sells cables and shoes to support the GPS, but it still seems like a feature that Nikon just sort of threw in unsupported.

So, I get the GPS and the camera hooked up…then what? You can do some pretty cool stuff actually. The coolest thing is being able to navigate on Flickr or Google Earth via a custom KML file. Not to mention that with the GPS, you can get some pretty amazing precision on the photos, so you can literally see the spot it was taken.

I hope to have some of the first photos up in a few days.

I’m writing this a Panera Bread. I’m not here becasue they have free wireless (it’s down), but becasue they have chairs. I have wireless at my house, but I have no place to sit. I also have no television.

Its very interesting how my life has changed in the last few days with the simple elimination of furniture and television. I don’t watch a lot of television, but I do sit at my computer a lot. In fact, my desktop broke when I got back from Wisconsin about a week ago, and I’ve been on my laptop since then, and that has been a big change by itself.

I bring these things up only becasue they were small changes that had pretty big effects on my daily life. I’ve been spending more time out of the house because you can only sit on the floor for so long. I’ve been reading more books, because I don’t have access to the net most of the time when I’m out of the house.

Traveling will be a HUGE adjustment for me because I usually require constant stimulation. I read about 250 RSS posts a day on Google Reader. Being off line for such long stretches will be a big change. I’ll need to use my computer more as just a tool for video editing and writing rather than as a tool for communications. I’ll probably have to get my news from papers than from the web. I’m sure I’ll be totally out of the loop on most internet memes over the next two years. Someone will make a joke referencing something on YouTube and I’ll be “what? huh?”

It may sound like I’m bitching, but really I’m looking forward to it. I spent two weeks in Hawaii last year without my computer. It was the longest stretch I’ve had without access in ages and it really didn’t bother me too much.

If nothing else, will be able to catch up on a lot of reading.