Another Blonde Moment

I used to think the only dumb blondes were the ones whose brains had been damaged from all that bleach and hair dye. As I got older I realized that even true blondes, like myself, have really dumb moments; maybe it's because we get a "pass" on having true responsibility or because people really do hold us to lower standards -- I don't know. Yeah, blondes can (and often do) have more fun, but as an endangered minority (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2284783.stm) I think we should be given special protections -- scholarships, minority status, etc -- that are provided to other so-called minority groups that are in less danger of extinction, and who are certainly not overwhelmingly seen as inherently stupid or morally deficient anymore.

But I digress.

I was having trouble with my new flashdrive yesterday -- I could save an initial copy of a file and access all my files, but I couldn't save any changes; I kept getting the error message that the disk was either full or write-protected. Now, I just got this flashdrive, and a simple check confirmed that I had almost complete available memory. If the drive was write-protected, this could mean only one thing: the files were corrupted and my flashdrive is broken, probably beyond repair.

Now, let me tell you about this flashdrive, 'cause I think it's the steal of the century. It's made by Nextar, and it's a flashdrive/voice recorder/mp3 player/FM tuner, and it has 1GB storage -- and I got it for about $20 at Wal-Mart. I don't know a whole lot about technological gizmos, but I think it's fucking awesome.

Not if it's broke, though. If the drive is broken, it just becomes a walkman. I don't need a walkman, I need a flashdrive -- I take online classes and I travel a lot, so I need a portable storage device for my homework.

So here's where the dumb blonde moment comes in. A lot of techie devices that run on batteries have a "hold" switch to keep the device from turning on when it's in your backpack so the batteries don't drain down. I'm a firm believer in not wasting batteries (or of wasting in general), so I switched the "hold" button on when I packed it with my other things. And because the ultra-thin barely-comprehensible owner's manual didn't warn me, I had no idea that this would not keep me from accessing files, but it would prevent me from making changes to the drive. After a lot of research on write-protection and this USB in particular, and changing batteries and trying to reformat the disk and just about anything I could think of, I was about ready to throw this piece of crap in the trash.

That's when I took a close look at my new toy and noticed the "hold" switch again. Sure enough, I was able to access my files and make changes to them, too. Ah, I love my new flashdrive!