Unhelpful

In the Era of the 5.25″ Floppy, data storage was a much more fragile endeavor than it is today when every typical home system has anywhere from 1-50 gigabytes of hard drive storage.

On the back of most disk jackets were warnings in many different languages about exactly what not to put your poor floppies through.

The floppy is all but irrelevant for most home users now, and the venerable 5.25″ lingers on only in the basement of your grandfather who, despite having enough money to travel on vacation every summer simply will not spend $500 or less for a brand new computer. He’s still got that 286 downstairs, and keeping it running, what with his WordPerfect 3.41 and DesqView, is some sort of strange badge of honor.

In some places, the floppy is still king (like spendthrift government agencies who can justify $200,000 for a new user server (or a few billion for a battleship that replaces a pefectly good model already in existance) but cannot seem to crawl out of the digital Stone Age).

My story takes place in one of these locations.

One evening at work, a friend comes up to me to get some free computer advice. It’s no imposition on me, and it beats futzing with crypto, so we talk for a while. The manager comes up to my friend and asks him for copies of a document he wanted - don’t worry, it wasn’t work related. My friend pulls out a 5.25″ floppy and explains that the document is saved, but the disk doesn’t seem to work anymore, and it sounds “like it’s not turning”. He tells him how he’s been trying to get it to read for about ten minutes or so.

They’re talking, and my friend is holding the disk in one hand, gesticulating with it a little, with his back turned toward me.

I knew just what to do.

Without a word, I snatched the disk from his hand, looked it over for about half a second, and proceeded to LICK THE DISKETTE right on the hole where the medium is visible. I turned it over and licked the other side. I then turned the medium a little in the diskette folder, put it back in his hand, which hadn’t moved…

I looked at their faces and it was an assortment of looks the likes of which you remember for the rest of your life - everything from pure horror to utter disbelief to complete incomprehension.

…BUT, goddamnit, THE DISK WORKED.

They were simply amazed not only that it worked, but because I touched the diskette in the SPECIAL HOLE with my tongue despite years of indoctrination about how we’re not even supposed to LOOK at that hole the wrong way by every diskette manufacturer in existance.

I think my friend still tells this story about me. It cemented my (mostly unearned) reputation as a voodoo priest of computer troubleshooting.

The only reason I even thought of that was because someone did the exact same thing to me about ten years earlier, whom I immediately bowed down to as a crazed priest of computer troubleshooting.

I pass this along to you in the dying days of the diskette so that you may benefit from this wisdom. It’s a lot cleaner than sacrificing a chicken.