Can't figure out where I am

I have a doohickey over there ⇒ which attempts to show where I am, what the weather is like, etc.

I've had something like that off and on on "personal" pages over the years (I think my WHOSWHO FORUM entry probably had one, my .plan had one at CMU, etc). One twist with this current incarnation is using latitude and longitude to hook up with Mapquest and recently, Terraserver to plot on a map and optionally display on a satellite shot.

On changing it this weekend to reflect going to or from Amagansett I played around with the links and discovered they were broken. On trying to figure out why they were broken I noticed this: you can't pull up a high resolution satellite shot from either Mapquest or Terraserver any more. Now, Terraserver sells them so it just may be a marketing move, but Mapquest...used to have an alternate view of whatever you'd plotted on a map that showed an aerial shot. Not great detail but, in my utter inability to remember addresses, enough detail to help figure out the location of a house if I'd been there before.

No more. I was trying to figure out which address was right for some friends (was it 17 Woodland or 71 Woodland?) and tried to pull it up using Mapquest...figuring that if the X marked the right spot I'd be able to tell by looking at the house. Nope.

So...if you don't get a card from me this week, don't blame me, blame the terrorists since I probably sent it to one of your neighbors up or down the street.

Once you sign up, you can't leave

Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting (washingtonpost.com) According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?" The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.