{"id":5705,"date":"2014-01-13T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T07:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5705"},"modified":"2014-01-12T23:30:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T06:30:57","slug":"why-i-keep-these-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5705","title":{"rendered":"Why I Keep These Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fishing around in my computer boneyard the other day, I happened upon an old 1997 Zip disk. A 100MB Zip disk, which was a popular form of removable storage about 15 years ago. The disk was labeled 1997<\/em>. Who knows what magic memories it held?
\n
\nSometimes I wonder why I hang onto such old stuff.<\/p>\n

I have a 14.4Kbps modem in the boneyard. I don’t know why. I don’t even have a land so there’s no place for me to connect a 14.4Kbps modem. In fact, I have a whole bin in the boneyard that’s full of phone jacks, connectors, splitters, and adapters. I know it’s there, but I just don’t throw it away. Weird.<\/p>\n

For the longest time, I kept my old DAT tapes. These were 250MB tapes on which I once backed up all the computers in my office. I even had the DAT drive. The problem? The device ran on the old SCSI interface. I don’t have a computer with that connection, so I eventually tossed the DAT drive and all the tapes.<\/p>\n

The DAT tapes were $80 each. The drive cost nearly $1000. Maybe that’s why I hung onto them?<\/p>\n

Still, some things linger. For example, that 100MB Zip disk labeled 1997<\/em>. Who knows what treasures it may hold? Why did I keep it? Perhaps it’s worth looking at.<\/p>\n

\"1997zip\"<\/p>\n

Fortunately, among the detritus of my boneyard I have a few Zip drives laying about. One of them just happened to be a USB drive.<\/p>\n

The first thing I thought was how cool it was that we actually had USB back in 1997. I had forgotten that. According to the intellectual rubbish bin of the Internet, Wikipedia, USB has been with us since 1996. So while the 1997<\/em> Zip disk may not have originally been used on a USB Zip drive, I just happened to have a USB Zip drive handy.<\/p>\n

I plugged the drive into my PC. It was recognized and the software installed. Then I shoved the disk into the drive.<\/p>\n

Time passed . . .<\/p>\n

Eventually the disk was read. I opened its icon in the Computer window and . . . I was disappointed. It was backed up financial files from 1997 and 1998. Yawn. I was hoping for some media files, say photos or a movie or audio recording. That would have been sweet.<\/p>\n

The lesson has been learned. I can now properly dispose of the 1997 100MB Zip disk. I don’t really need it, and I suppose if I keep it from laying about, the temptation to load it up and re-discover what’s on in 10 years hence will be gone. That might be a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I wonder why I keep old computer stuff. Then a bit of nostalgia hits, and rummaging through my computer boneyard is like a trip down memory-mapped lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5705"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5723,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions\/5723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}