Greetings from Hurlburt Field, FL!!! It’s about midway between Pensacola and Panama City on the FL Gulf Coast. I think they call this area the “Emerald Coast”. I’m here for 2 1/2 weeks for some Air Force training, don’t worry, I’ll be home by Christmas!
After this morning’s initial shock of having to scrape ice off my windshield with the sleeve of my shirt, we got to the class and was met with many things that told me just how long it had been since I’d been through any formal Air Force training!
I last did formal AF training in summer 2000, I guess.
As you see from the picture, I now am in possession of an eBook. It isn’t mine, I have to give it back on the last day of class. The top model is what I have and what you see pictured above (which is the one I have right now). This is what was issued to me instead of the stack of books of days gone by. We had about an hour of training on how to use this eBook and then we sat with them in front of us, following along the diagrams, notes and supplemental text via our eBook.
It certainly got me thinking: how much did this cost the Air Force? I’m sure it was a lot — but then I thought about how much more flexible this is for updating all the class materials, and the cost savings on paper and printing/binding costs. Pretty cool.
There’s a younger officer in the class who is assigned to the active duty unit I work with in SC. I see him routinely when I drill every couple months. When we received our eBooks, Alan took his and knew exactly what to do with it, while I was fumbling like an idiot. He walked me through many of the basic tasks and I felt at least slightly ahead of the game by the time we received the formal training.
Typically I pride myself in keeping on top of technology, but I have to admit that this one took me by surprise! I’ve seen those Amazon Kindles for sale — they’re pretty expensive and always backordered…I’ve never seen an e-book in person so after a while I had a good time playing with it.
Too bad it’s a military eBook, many of the functions are disabled, such as the ability to go out and download, say, Breaking Dawn* by Stephenie Meyer, the next book I’ll be reading…
*OMG! I’m so hooked on the Twilight Saga! I haven’t seen the movie as of this writing, but my friend Lisa Coleman (she was stationed in Raleigh while we were living in NC, and she’s now stationed here in FL) might join me this weekend. I read 1/2 of Eclipse yesterday on the plane. I plan to finish the rest of Eclipse this week…in between working on Christmas cards and the Vollmer Holiday Newsletter.