Thanks for all the suggestions!!! they really did help. He's in the Nat'l guard and his MOS is 21B -- combat engineer. But, he's in a headquarters unit so he's pretty much going to be in the TOC all the time, answering radios, hooking up electronics, planning missions and whatnot. so i dont think he's going to be out in the sand too much (he got lucky). i was also thinking about getting some webcams for our computers so that we can see each other that way. any other ideas are welcome thanks again!!