Is there life after Location3 Media? Will Handsfield, a.k.a. PPC Handyman, lets us know that there is! Will recently abandoned the online marketing industry and picturesque Rocky Mountains to find work in D.C. as a transportation planner. If you know Will at all or have spent even ten minutes speaking with him, you are not shocked by this decision—Will’s fondness for bicycles, green living and politics shine through in nearly every conversion, no matter what the topic. We are sad to see him leave and will miss his antics and anecdotes, but I’m pleased to say that Will is not completely gone—PPC Handyman has agreed to write occasional guest columns on expertSEM and has provided an opinion piece for this newsletter. Thanks, Will, for your continued support and ever-amusing ramblings.

The Unknown Perils of Moving: Playing Chicken with a Flash Drive?
By Will Handsfield

Indestructible Flash Drive

I recently left Location3 Media in order to pursue a career in transportation planning in Washington, D.C. In anticipation of leaving my faithful work computer, I thought I had everything figured out. I would copy all the photos, letters and personal documents which inevitably end up on one’s work computer, and save them on a portable flash drive which I could take home easily. I did exactly that on my final day, believing all was well in data land.

In all the talk about backing up one’s data, making DVD copies of important files, saving your entire hard drive on an external device which you keep in an entirely different location (in case of fire, of course), one implication is clear—data is fragile.

It seems that those of us who rely on data storage for our very livelihoods ought to be meticulous in our organization and storage of data, lest the slightest twilight zephyr blow through the room and in a fluke accident erase every important file we’ve kept for the past decade. I myself have bought into this advice to a certain extent, going so far as to own a 100 gigabyte external hard drive (currently living in a Public Storage unit in Bethesda, Maryland). I am also a big proponent, though an infrequent user, of “cloud computing” services such as Google docs. Suffice it to say, I believe that data is fragile, and should be backed up, backed up and backed up some more.

Imagine my horror, then, when I was unloading my laundry from the dryer, and discovered not only 32¢ in loose change, but my flash drive with the sole copies of many of my personal files from work on the bottom of the dryer. At the time of the dryer discovery, I was horrified at what I had done, in my haste to move, I had forgotten to check my pockets before doing my final loads of laundry.

My course of action was unclear, while the flash drive had gone through a complete washer and dryer cycle, the outward appearance was fine, less a few letters from the screened-on graphics. I was concerned, however, that the inundation of soapy water, followed by a centrifugal spin, then a sustained blast of hot air while spinning along a horizontal axis (damn you, gravity!) would have surely been the end of every last byte of data. Deciding to play it conservatively, I chose not to do anything with the drive for at least two weeks, lest there be any remaining water inside which might short one of the billions of circuits contained within.

I am happy to report, dear reader, that I ran the flash drive, and have yet to find a file with any missing data, or any missing files for that matter. I was sure that every picture would have a big pixilated blank spot right in the middle of it, but no, all is well in digital memory land.

While I don’t plan to repeat this exercise again, I am impressed and astonished at the apparent durability of flash memory. Take from this story what you will, but perhaps the “fragile data” theory has been a bit oversold. The most important data on the flash drive were the picture files from the many office parties, kickball and dodgeball games, and lunchtime hijinx which inevitably occur when you work with a great group of people. I am so glad that I’ll have these mementos to remind me of my many friends at Location3 Media.