"Not Your Ordinary Swiss Army Knife" by Brownie Points

Not Your Ordinary Swiss Army Knife

June 22, 2012

This morning, I called my friend and said I needed to get some pictures off of her computer for a story in the paper. She replied that she had too many to send via email. She asked me, "Why don't you bring your USB flash drive, and I'll get them to you that way?"

My USB flash drive?

Honestly, haven't used one since before tenth grade. It's sad that a USB flash drive — which allows multiple GBs of files to be stored on a little stick and was a jaw-dropping innovation a little over a decade ago — is, at least to me, technologically obsolete.

I have my trusty MacBook Pro with me at most hours of the day, and if I need to transport a file, I upload it to my GoogleDocs account. Bam. Just like that, I can access any file, anywhere, anytime, as long as there's Internet access. (And honestly, where would there not be Internet access?!)

Even if I did happen to still have one, it's probably been lost in the dark abyss of chaos that is my room at home, never to be seen again.

Of course, I told my friend, "Sure, no problem!" I figured I'd just have to take a roadtrip to Walmart and buy another one.

While rummaging through my purse searching for a little cash, I came across a little Swiss Army knife keychain. A Christmas gift from a family member seven or eight years ago. Hadn't seen the thing in at least five years and have no idea how it ended up there in the first place.

I turned the device over in my hand several times. Quickly I realized that this was no mundane old Swiss Army knife.

One side folded out and became a knife. Another part turned into a nail file. On the other side, there was a pair of tiny scissors. And right in the middle was a piece that I pushed out to reveal ... a USB flash drive. Who knew?

It only holds 512 MB of space. I looked up the devices online, and the smallest size the Swiss Army flash drive comes in now is 8 GB. Technology never ceases to amaze me.

But it does the job. Pretty nifty find. It has now taken its rightful place on my car key ring. Picture crisis averted.