Pam and list, Wow! I missed a lot, since I didn't go to TSI for training; but I remember the first couple lessons with my instructor; she had to drive all the way to Fremont from Berkeley, a couple of Saturdays. I was so excited and jazzed, and every word she said was indelibly ingrained in me. I thought the design of the machine was brilliant, although the camera holder didn't clip on to the machine very well since the clip was broken and I had to tape it together; but aside from that, I just thought those engineers were brilliant! My excitement was probably so intense I bet I wore out that teacher! But it was a blast! Being in the mountains learning during the very rainy week of instruction was great, except that on the last day it was really gorgeous and we were outside all day and I came home with one horrible sunburn! It was so bad I was shivering. I got over it though; when you're young you can get over just about anything pretty fast. But I'll never forget that first day; it was like the window to print was wide open! It was like a million Christmas presents! When I was interviewed at IBM, they loved watching me read a computer printout; unfortunately, when I started working and we had big terminal rooms, before everybody got their own terminals, the buzz drove some people crazy; one guy muttered about it sounding like a Minnesota lightning bug; somebody else was trying to figure out if it was sending Morse code since he was a ham radio enthusiast, and it was driving him nuts. I've demonstrated the optacon at church gatherings and people have said they wouldn't mind their tax money being used for something like this. But that's about as far as it's gone. I still talk about the optacon though, since people wonder how I live without having people read to me. Mary Emerson E-mail: maryemerson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Skype name: mkemerson Podcast web site: http://www.emerson.libsyn.com Podcast feed: emerson.libsyn.com/rss To unsubscribe at any time, just send a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject. Tell your friends about the list. They can subscribe by sending a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject.