Obsolete technology

Wow! I got a mail from an old undergrad friend of mine. He wanted to know if I had a soft copy of my transcripts from the undergrad days and the first year syllabus. Now for those thinking how can I keep a soft copy of transcripts and what business this friend of mine had with my transcripts, let me just tell you that we made our own transcript format in our undergrad. No..no... we did not fake our grades, just put them in a nice little format to be presentable. Now getting these transcripts sealed, verifed and stamped by the registrar was such a process (it is a whole another story) that I shudder even when I think whether I might apply again if I had to go through that.

Anyway that got me thinking. Sure, I should have a soft copy of the transcripts. I was very particular about keeping records in case I would need them later. And then it hit me, it would be on a floppy disk. Now my bigger challenge was not finding the floppy disk with the transcripts itself or hoping that the floppy is corrupt (remember that thing happening to your most important data) but finding a machine with a floppy drive that would enable me to get the data off it. Isn't it amazing how much we have changed in this amount of time. Thankfully, it is one of those smoller floppy disks and not the ever so bendy, big-ass floppy disks that had to be handled with forceps. So I still have hopes of being able to help my friend out.

Have things changed so much that you stop thinking about floppy disks and how dependent we were on them back then to move data around. Nowadays, i hardly even use CDs to write data out. I just use my internet webpage space or yahoo briefcase or sometimes even mail it to myself. And then I got a laptop. So I can move around with the data. Add the disks to the collection of magnetic tapes and puch cards in the museum of obsolete technology I say and let's forget the past.