Zip

A few weeks ago, my old dissertation adviser emailed me asking for some data we had collected back in 2002. I wasn't sure I still had the data, given that I've used four computers and have made major moves twice since the last time I worked with the dataset.  After nearly giving up on finding the data, I remembered that I still had two old Zip disks in a box in my office closet, and I wondered if the dataset was on one of those ancient disks.

The problem, of course, was that I no longer had a Zip drive.  So I headed over to Academic Computing to use one of their old drives this morning.  I was thrilled to actually find the dataset on one of the disks, as well as a number of other documents I don't remember ever writing.  I copied the information to a USB drive.

As I was finishing, the technician in the room said, "You know, you shouldn't use Zip disks anymore.  They're really old technology."

Ummm, really?  Did he really need to say that?  Did he actually think my current research was stored on clumsy Zip disks?  And if I was that stupid, wouldn't I have my own Zip drive?

I just laughed a little (typical!) and said, "Dude, I don't mess with Zip disks.  I keep most of my stuff on floppies."  He didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor.