Don, Before Rehab bought my first optacon, I had a loaner machine which was in one of those wooden cases. I loved that case; I think it was much better made than the soft packs. In fact, all my soft packs have foam that has dried out and gotten all over the inside of the soft pack. If TSI had stuck with the wooden cases, perhaps with rounded edges, I think the optacon would be much better protected. My training was done with an instructor, one on one, and part of it took place at my parents' cabin in the mountains. One thing I used my optacon to do after completing the training was to sort the family's mail every day, until I had to go back to computer school and read homework assignments. Sorting the mail was fun, because it didn't take much effort, and most of it involved reading envelope addresses, which didn't take long. I also enjoyed looking at my college textbooks, especially the ones I never had time to read in college. I found out that one of them wasn't what I thought it was; instead, it was the title of a book that another student was purchasing, and I thought it was one of my books, that had been put on his pile instead of mine. After discovering, five years later, it was really his book that I had taken, I realized why he left briefly while we were still in the book store; he left to get another copy, because I had taken his book without realizing it. I hope he wasn't mad at me for making that mistake 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.