T’was, if my memory serves me right, the fall of ’00. Fall of course being a misnomer as far as Chennai is concerned. Despite senescence stripping from my memory most joys experienced as a kid, vague recollections indicate in ways more than one that I was in fact the rockstar of fifth standard C section. I had fulfilled the ultimate fantasy of many a fifth grader. I was in possession of a box full of Imation’s very best, 3.5 inch magnetic drives better known as floppy disks. That year saw my fame flirt with hitherto unseen levels. I had it all, the setup of QBasic obtained by coaxing the computer teacher, DOOM, Alladin, a million other DOS games, and virtually anything and everything that could fit under 1.4MB (Oh wait, I had the split software as well). My time at the top though, was extremely short-lived. Imation started manufacturing CDs and the morons who called themselves my classmates soon discovered that 700 is metaphorically a million multiplied with 1.4. I painfully watched the blessed ones burn their way to the top, literally! I was at their mercy, for Claw, for Visual Basic and mp3 files which had by then gained prominence. I patiently bid my time. Revenge, I promised myself, would be sweet.

2006, a million RAM and motherboard failures later, we decided to go for one of those sleek new AMD Athlons. I was a man with a vision. Nothing less than a DWD RW +- would satiate my hunger, I growled. “Smart young man”, the chap who helped us assemble the system patronized, with sarcastic undertones that went totally over my head. 4.7GB was still a lot. I even bought a DVD RW with a friend, promising to update it with the latest software, a geek repository of sorts. Blinded by the constant burning, I was totally underprepared for the USB revolution that would follow. ‘Flash’y drives, no bigger than my own thumb had pied pipered my entire school. After that, I could never catch up; always two steps behind. My own 4GB pendrives became obsolete as the world oohed and aahed at those portable hard disks. 320GB, they claimed. More space than you could ever hope for, inside your palm. The following summers were filled with woes, and vows. I digress.

This summer was memorable in more ways than I myself could have ever imagined. Unlike the Pahadi Shutterbug, the sole purpose of whose internship was to return with a few million photographs, I do not have the fortune of sepia to relive my summer. No relics but for two Digital Versatile Discs with tales from a galaxy far, far away. This summer, I also treated myself to a Seagate Freeagent Hard drive. 1TB (931GB to be precise) of zeroes and ones shall fill my precious. And very soon, I shall once again be in vogue. Life comes a full circle.

P.S: I know that 2TB hard drives are commonplace nowadays but what the hell, Bill Gates once said

640K ought to be enough for anybody

Filed under: All about Me Tagged: Geeky, Maddu-Land, Random, Summer, Tech