I bought a USB memory stick for Beta and one for myself. Impulse purchase, it was there on the counter at the stationery store, next to the candybars. Only 64 MB but cheap, so I got two. Mine works well on the office PC, which runs XP. Can’t get the fuckers to run on our home PC, though, which still has Windows 98. None of the drivers I download from the company’s website work.
So anyway. I’m moving everything from the diskettes I carry around in my pockets to this little USB stick. Mostly manuscripts of some sort. At least I can tinker with them at work. Only on my lunch break of course.
Eventually I’m going to archive all the files on the home PC on CDs and do something rash. Reinstall the operating system, or something newer. I fear the PC itself is too old for XP.
Anyway, one of these diskettes, the next to last one, has no label, just an X written on it in gold marker. It crashes my work PC whenever I insert it. I tried it ten times just to make sure. Yep, appears to be something to do with this diskette. Don’t even have time to do a virus scan of it or anything. Just, insert that’s it. Not even a blue screen.
Whatever. Technology mystifies me. It’s still a big deal for me when I go into the kitchen in the morning, open the dishwasher and presto, the dishes are all clean! And I distinctly remember loading them the night before, dirty!
I’m on a fast, you see.
It’s part of this thing I’m doing that I oughtn’t talk about to get my creativity flowing. One of my tasks this week: don’t read. Don’t watch TV. Since I don’t have a TV, I’m not listening to the radio neither and not monkeying around on the Internet.
So if you don’t see me in your referrer stats this week, it’s nothing personal. I don’t even re-read what I’m writing here.
Not reading is harder than I thought. I don’t know how many times I caught myself with an International Herald Tribune in my hand this morning.
If you take tha bad disk to a computer store staffed by geeks and promise to buy something from them next time you need a USB memory stick or something, I bet they’d take it as an interesting challenge to read your disk and make a fresh copy to your memory stick. Just hope it isn’t your forgotten collection of something quite embarrassing.
But you aren’t reading this because you’re on a fast.
Ah yes, the big decision to switch from floppy to USB. I’m still harboring regret at not getting a floppy drive in my new laptop, and must make the transition of all the info on one computer onto another plus backup. Creativity shouldn’t be so technological, should it…
I have discovered a new kind of technological worry. When you have a large 13 year old in the house who is a little clumsy do to growing 2 or 3 inches n the last year, and he leaves your laptop on the living room floor after using it, and accidentally steps on it, he can break the LCD screen.
It’s kind of interesting, the glass (or maybe it’s plastic) screen has cracked in several places, but it still works exept for a few black blotches. But if you move the computer you can see it flexing where the cracks are and it makes little waves in the screen, they really ARE “liquuid” crystal displays.. Amazing.
Not quite so amazing that I am happy to spend what I’m sure will be 80% of the cost of the whole computer to replace the LCD screen..
I’m not reading these comments, of course, but just wanted to mention the tech guy at work told me (he was sitting in front of my PC, fixing it at the time) that cheap USB memory sticks tend to malfunction. And that I ought to throw away that diskette.