A while ago I bought an Amazon Kindle so I don’t have to haul any books around on deployment. I must say, I am quite impressed with it.

To start, the battery lasts a long time. I can go weeks at a time without charging it. It’s slim, fairly simple to use and easy on the eyes.

UPs:
- Charges your CC without having to login
- Group books together to reduce clutter on the home screen
- Copy PDFs/Books from the computer over to the Kindle
- Free 3G world wide (if you get the 3G version)
- Computer application if you want to read from your laptop/desktop
- Make notes / Bookmark
- Built in dictionary

Downs:
- A bit slow at times
- 3G is not the fastest where I am at.

Overall it was worth the $189 for the Wifi+3G version.

2009 was a good year. I did a bit of traveling for both work and pleasure.

Cozumel, Mexico – 7-8 days on a scuba diving trip
Germany – 3 weeks on a work related trip
New York – 2 weeks on a work related trip
Colorado – 1 week vacation

2010 is no different.

March
Texas – SxSW Festival
Texas(again) – For MOSQ school
and a few other place(s) I won’t talk about at the moment.

Starting stage 2 of the craziness. Cozumel was AMAZING. I got plenty of pictures however I have not uploaded all ~700 of them yet. You can see what I have here.

Today I got approved for the apartment I was looking at. Tomorrow shortly after drill I am signing the lease. I will be moving in once I get back from Germany in ~3 weeks. It was also my last day working for the school district =(  . Seems odd that it was going on 5 years since I started working there.

Saturday I leave for Germany! Wooo! Hopefully I will have some fun. There are a few things I am not liking so far, but hopefully it will change.

(it will be the 3rd time this week I am in Charlotte.. peachy!)

Hopefully when things settle down I will write a decent blog post.

So the next few weeks will be quite crazy for me. Friday I will be heading over to a hotel in Detroit. Saturday morning I have a flight at 6am to Cozumel Mexico for a nice 8 day SCUBA diving vacation. SWEET!!! Ive been waiting for over 6 months on this trip and its finally here.

6 days after I get back from that trip I will be heading to Germany for just under 3 weeks for some National Guard training. I hear its going to be boring, however it will be a great expereince in my opinion. I had to get a Hep-A, Hep-B, and Flu shot as my records were out of date. Then they health department also gave me a tetnis shot because my state records didn’t show it even though the military records did. (bummer dude!)

I applied for an AGR (full time) job with my Guard unit as a Personell Services Delivery Redesign Clerk. Essentially I take work that would happen at the state level and do it here. After a few short weeks I found out I got the job. So I will be moving to Charlotte and starting that job shortly after I get back from Germany. I am really excited for this. Though I will have to reclass my MOS to a 42A (Human Resources). Though, I think this is a good thing so I have no problem doing it.

There is what I am calling a new kid on the block of music sharing. I am not sure when they started but what they are doing is cool. Spotify is a new startup that streams music to your computer for FREE. Yes there are others that do this such as Last.FM and Pandora however Spotify comes with a nice iTunes like application (though it is MUCH faster than iTunes). The music also starts installing playing like it was playing music stored on your hard drive. The way they also get the music to your computer seems like a new concept for a business model. Not only to they serve the music from their servers but also p2p (peer to peer). You know, how you stole that latest Katy Perry track last night.

Unfortunately at this time it is not available in the United States. That does not mean I have not used this application. Hopefully I will get some invites to share.

Spotify Screenshot