109 – armchair dot tech

March 8, 2004 | TAGS:

The following rant was submitted by windex/theinx/theOracle/redinx at my request. When I first heard the story of the borrowed floppy drive, I couldn’t believe it. However, strange as it seems, the following story is true. We just can’t make stuff like this up.

So, Squegie asked me if I knew anyone who is into graphics design and could create a logo for one of his websites. I told him I knew of someone who was between jobs and looking for something interesting to do besides calculus homework, so I passed the word along.

That weekend I asked her if she had a chance to think about how she was going to design it, and she said she was done and ready to send it back, except for one small hitch…

Despite having almost the best computer you can build off the shelf, there is only one way to get files off the computer and onto another one, short of removing the hard drive and throwing it into another computer.

Note that it is “almost” the best computer.

There’s no working CD burner.

I pitched the idea of buying a USB memory stick, but no current job = no spare money. I had left my memory stick at work over the weekend, so there went that idea.

There is a NIC installed, but no phone or Ethernet jacks in the room.

What about a floppy drive, you might ask?

The computer used to have one, until her boyfriend borrowed it for “a few days” to fix his co-worker’s computer. They broke up a few days later, with him still having custody of “his” floppy drive.

So, the only possible solution is to take her computer downstairs and network it with mom’s computer, and email the file to herself so she could then download the file from her email and copy it to a floppy.

Someday, kids ‘round the world will learn of this story and use it as a convenient excuse in school. It’s the digital equivalent of “my dog ate my homework”. You heard it here first.