Jump drive on lanyard = cool IT guy
Is it just me, or does it seem like a jump drive on a lanyard around the neck has become the sign of an IT person? I finally jumped on that bandwagon recently and started wearing my data.
For the past year or so, I had been carrying a USB SD card reader in my pocket along with a couple of 128MB SD cards. That was sufficient until I needed to run some diagnostics on an HP server a couple of months ago. I had the option of burning a CD with the required software on it, or using an HP-provided tool to create a bootable USB jump drive that did the same thing. I opted for the jump drive route, but it required a 1GB+ drive. I grabbed a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro from our stock cabinet at work and was able to run my diagnostics and even save a report back to the jump drive.
The drive came with a lanyard, and since I was already wearing my nametag on a lanyard, I decided to join the geek elite and strap some storage on. I spent some time downloading all kinds of utilities and working out directory structures and functionality in a futile attempt to fill the 2GB space. I was in awe of the amount of storage available in such a small form factor.
About two weeks after I got the drive, I was reaching in to unplug it from my laptop when I felt a snap of static electricity. This is a normal thing for me, since I seem to be some sort of biological capacitor. I regularly see bright flashes of static discharge when I touch the car door after climbing out at night. I'm so used to the shock that I don't pay much attention to it anymore.
Anyway, the static killed my little Cruzer. I tried several utilities and tricks to revive it, but alas, it was dead. I carried the poor thing around on my lanyard for a couple more days in desperate hopes that it would wake from its coma. I finally accepted the fact that my little friend was gone forever and moved on. I mentioned the loss to a coworker and he gave me his old 1GB SanDisk Cruzer Titanium. It's 3 times larger than my old drive, 5 times heavier, and half the capacity, but it looks cooler. It appears to be more sturdy as well, since I've had it for a few weeks and it hasn't succumbed to my electrifying personality yet.
We recently installed card readers on the doors at work, so I put a retractable cord spool on my nametag that allows me to zip it out and flash it in front of the reader. I strung that on my lanyard along with the heavy jump drive. I also had a "team excellence award" pin that I received for developing a web app for one of the departments. I put that on my lanyard. To balance things out, I put an American flag pin on the other side of the lanyard. I now wear a 5-pound conglomeration of bling around my neck that proves without a doubt that I am an all-American, team-playing, data-carrying geek. Whee.