My fobbie died on me. Perhaps I should explain; I picked up the term “fobbie†from Eileene, and I’m not sure “fobbie†is a term in widespread use. It means one of those little portable USB memory chips about the size of a finger that contain more computing power than the entire eastern seaboard in 1978.
Or some of them do. Mine had a capacity of 1 GB, which is pretty modest by fobbie standards, but it served admirably well for my needs: the occasional transfer of a few text files or a .jpg between machines when our wireless was down, or when I didn’t want to connect directly to a strange computer, or when I couldn’t find a cable, or in one case when I wanted to wrap some .pdf files as a Christmas gift. We’re becoming more connected daily, but sometimes a little old-school data transfer is the way to go. Like books in an era of Kindles.
But alas, my fobbie died. I didn’t know they could wear out, except perhaps at the contact point that slides in and out of the USB port. Maybe that’s what happened here. And after years of good service, from a gizmo I got for free—inherited from Eileene, who picked it up as a freebie at some kind of tech expo—I need a replacement. More expensive, less physically esthetic, and almost certainly more powerful for no good reason than that they don’t make them in 1GB size anymore. It will be missed.
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