Welcome to MobileRead Johns1NOnly.
cassidym and I are always glad to have another Virginian in the forums. There are a bunch of us in the Northern Virginia area.
Between the 505 and Gen3 you can't make a wrong decision. Both are great. The screens are the same and there are a lot of books available in both formats. For top line commercial books it seems that the Mobipocket format used by the Gen3 is available at more places than you can find Sony books. (In short, there's the Sony Store.) Also, Mobipocket has the ability to install a dictionary with direct word look-up that is not implemented in the 505. That said, I like the look and (most important) the feel of the Sony. For me it is a better balanced reader and has a better layout for the controls (page turning) than the Gen3.