I got the good news today that my computer has been built and is ready for shipment. The thing that stinks in all this is that it took a month to get built despite what HP said on their website and what their order center said. I am looking forward to getting it late next week.

The Fed Ex tracking number provides all sorts of information about a shipment. One of the things it does is tell you where the shipment originated. My computer is coming from Chongqing China. So I fired up Google maps and had a look. The order center said it would be shipped to Memphis and then to my house. Memphis is the huge Fed Ex hub in the US. I plotted the route to Memphis then to Houston. The direct route looks curvy because it is a great circle route plotted on a Mercator map. So 7700 miles to Memphis then another 600 miles to Houston. Of course the actual route is going to likely be different but you get the point. This stuff is cool.