Erich T. Wade

For the longest time, I’ve had this troubling problem with my laptop. You see, it’s extremely useful to be able to write anywhere. In fact, my first computer was a laptop precisely because the family computer was in a location that, frankly, was rather poisonous to my muse.

Unfortunately, writing anywhere on my current laptop has proved to be something of a challenge. For starters, the computer has a few issues. Nothing major, but its battery always reads at 5% charge – no matter what – and doesn’t last long at any rate, so it pretty much has to be plugged in most of the time I’m using it. Also, it occasionally has this problem on boot where the backspace, u, and a few other keys don’t work until I reboot. My account name on the laptop is Cthulhu, so you can see how this might be a problem. (My laptop’s name is R’lyeh, in case you were wondering.)

All that’s fairly trivial, though. That’s not what stops me. It’s not that my laptop runs Ubuntu, and as such doesn’t run most of my favorite Windows-based writing aid programs (not easily, anyway). It’s not that the aforementioned programs run slowly, though that’s a factor.

It’s that my files aren’t with me. They’re at home. I can transfer one to my laptop’s desktop via flash drive, modify it, transfer it back – but that’s a pain, because when I get home I have to set up my laptop, plug it in, turn it on – desk space is at a premium for me right now. I usually just end up making new files on the laptop’s desktop and transferring them in bulk every few days or so. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a nice, compact way to carry all my files with me from computer to computer?

The answer, of course, is a flash drive. And it’s not like I don’t have a few. I mean, they’re literally giving them out with boxes of cereal these days. (Seriously. 1Gb flash drive with 8 proof-of-purchases. Don’t remember the brand, but it was there.) The problem with my flash drive, see, is that it’s sticking out the front of my desktop, where it happily stays 24/7 holding my most important files and, well, not really doing anything else. Because I’m afraid of losing the bloody thing. Or breaking it (a justified fear with my most recent one, whose USB plug is at an angle with the rest of it). And then my precious, irreplaceable, neurotically-backed-up files would be gone forever. Except for, you know, the backups. (In all fairness I don’t back up stuff as much as I should, but it’s often enough.)

So I’m compromising. Today I dug up my old 512-meg flash drive, a nice compact Sandisk with a pretty blue light and, more importantly, a lanyard. This is, in fact, the very flash drive that I got back in high school and used until, oh, a couple of months ago when I “upgraded” to the 4-gig, lanyard-less, already-broken-necked flash drive sticking out of my desktop right now.

And you know what? Works like a charm. I loaded up a couple of files and spent the first half of my break digging through some of the more interesting stuff I’d left on it. Then, I wrote about a hundred new words on Derelict during the last ten minutes of my break. It’s sticking out of my desktop now, merely awaiting a quick file transfer. It’s like having an old familiar friend back.

Best of all, I finally got over my guilt for replacing the poor thing.