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Stick That in Your Memory
I blame 
Bruce Gillespie .
A few months ago there was some kind of football tournament, and someone from some charity came around with an opportunity for the pub to run a lottery where the winner got to have a framed 1966 World Cup print of photos and tickets and the programme and all that. Because it was for charity, and as we were determined to get all the numbers sold on the first day, I chose two numbers and paid my two pounds, and in return (to get around the gambling laws and all that) I received two cigarette lighters which happened to coincide with a chance to enter a prize draw. I chose one in a rather fetching shade of purple, as well as another one, which matched.
In the meantime I'd been looking at memory sticks, because I'm fed up of never being able to find the pen that writes on CDs and I'm forever having to ferry work I'm not doing at home to work so that I can fail to do it at work, and equally stuff I'm failing to do at work needs to be taken home so I can fail to do it there as well. And even with Broadband, graphics heavy PowerPoint presentations take forever to upload and download and I keep going over quota with email.
I'm a big believer in backing up stuff, ever since I lost a chapter of my PhD into three separate computers with three separate programs. But floppies just don't hack it anymore, in an era when Word would take a mountain of them rather than a handful, just so that we can have an animated paperclip. CDs get scratched, and confused, and left in computers. Fortunately, but probably centuries later than everyone else, given I've not long had a machine with a USB, I discovered memory sticks and after much research, found a sufficient large one in Tescos, which is a rather fetching shade of purple.
It came in very useful when, in the process of flogging N's non-CD-burning, no-floppy-drive computer to my mother, we could download his stuff to the stick, run upstairs, and upload it to my CD-burning, no-internal-but-I-bought-an-external-floppy-drive computer. Of course, most of the data appeared to be the same compilation album, but at least the data is safe. All that was left to me was burning it onto three CDs for him, and deleting the stuff on his machine. Later on, as my mother's machine was a non-CD-burning, floppy-drive no USB port computer, I gave her my floppy drive so she could ferry across data between her machines. This leaves me with my old non-CD-burning, floppy-drive no USB port computer, from which I will save stuff to disc, take the disc to work, save it on that a non-CD-burning, floppy-drive, USB port bloody sensibly located round the back machine, and then download it to the stick, take that home...
I'm very sensitive about backupability right now, given I have electronic versions only of the paper I'm giving next week, and the P Project, and so I backed them up onto my stick. Of course, paranoia doesn't stop there. So I keep on having to check my pockets to see if it's still there. What happens if I lose the stick? Yesterday I decided to leave the stick at home, and take the computer with me as a back up. There's no way that can be acidentally pulled out my pocket with a glasses cleaning cloth. Okay, I needed to steal a trolley from Morrison to carry it around it, but I feel much more secure in my own mind now.
But there is the problem of the rather fetching shade of purple, in that I'm carrying around and memory stick and a cigarette lighter. As I said, I blame Bruce Gillespie. Several years ago he described me as a vaguely sarcastic pipe smoking academic and - whilst resenting that vaguely - there was nothing for it but to buy a pipe. And of course a lighter is necessary to use a pipe. Then on top of that, the ignition button on my gas oven won't work (or rather, won't stop working), and it's useful, if dangerous, to light that with.
What I've discovered though is that a memory stick is bloody useless when it comes to lighting pipes, cigars, cigarettes, candles, t-lights and gas ovens, and frankly the memory capacity of a lighter leaves a lot to be desired.
But who knew you could fit one into a USB port?
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On the other hand, I've tried again today, and having ressuring images of a bar s l o w l y being filled in. You reeker.
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