This post on the Daily WTF reminded me of the old days when we used the 5.25″ floppy disk and some of the problems we had because of its “floppy” nature.
The disk itself was encased only in cardboard which meant that the life expectancy of the disk was extremely short.
Once, a disk we’d been expecting arrived in the post with a compliment slip. Someone had driven a staple through the outer cardboard body and the disk itself to make sure the compliment slip was firmly attached. Needless to say the disk was ruined.
The funnest thing I remember about these disks was when a person (who will remain nameless) was asked to post us a copy of a floppy disk they had, The next day a letter containing a photocopy of the disk arrived. We kept that photocopy on the notice-board for a long time.
Users were a lot less sophisticated in those far off days of yore.
Time moves on and we began to use CDs which are much tougher but not indestructible.
One CD I’d sent through the post was returned as damaged, it hadn’t be scratched, shattered, melted or anything else you might expect, It had been squashed flat (or is that flatter) and increased its diameter by about an inch. I never found out how.
My very very first bike
I’m the one sitting on the bike.
I’ve been riding bikes a long time , apparently since I was only one year old.
I don’t remember the bike, from the picture it looks like a Honda CB 175cc.
Vespa 125ccWhen I bought the Vespa 125cc it wasn’t red and it didn’t have all its wheels but other then that it was in good condition, After applying elbow grease and a fresh coat of cherry paint it looked exactly like the one in the picture (like the one in the picture, unfortunately I don’t’ have a picture of it myself). The great thing about the Vespa was that it is one of the few bikes to carry a spare wheel. I never got to ride the Vespa on the road, I was only fifteen at the time and too young to have a license. I sold it on to a Vespa Enthusiast.
Tomas 49ccThe first bike I actually got to ride on the public highway with was an old “Tomas” moped pretty much like the one in the picture, It had a top speed of 45mph wind assisted going down hill on the other hand it cost almost nothing to run.
The big problem with the bike was that I’d have to stop every 10 or so miles and let it cool down. I sold it as soon as my parents allowed me to get a bigger bike, it was seriously harming my credibility.
The Yamaha RXS 100This bike was fantastic, Reliable, economic, quick and cheap. The one I had was 10 years old. I still see them being ridden around even though Yamaha stopped making them in 1995. I’m convinced they stopped making in them cause they lasted forever. The one scare i had on this bike was when it hydo-planed on the South Mall in Cork city, All i could do was glide along and wait for the wheels to regain their grip, which they did after a few seconds.
Suzuki Marauder 125ccI prefer to call it “My Mistake”. I let my head be turned by the slighty larger engine of 125cc, I wish I’d kept the RXS. This bike was slow, poor maneuverability and bad ground clearance. The RXS is a much better bike and I’d recommend it to anyone for their first bike even now, If they can get their hands on one in fair condition.
Honda Shadow 750vtI got this bike new in 2000 and still ride it. An absolutely fantastic bike. power, speed and comfort, A joy to ride, It’s got 50K miles on it now. The only problem is that the front tyre is a non-standard size and is expensive to replace.
Last week on a lunch time radio phone in show, a Google “scandal” broke.
A caller had for no apparent reason searched Google using her phone number, and got back a single result. Although when she tried to view it the classic “not found” message appeared.
Not to be defeated she went back to Google and clicked on the “cached” link and up popped hers and her husbands personal details.
Shocked at the apparent intrusion on her privacy she called the company to which the document belonged and demanded to know what was what.
She was told that the document contained the details of a number of customers (of which she was one) which had accidentally been copied to the wrong location on a server and exposed to the internet, but that this had been corrected as soon as it was spotted. Unfortunately Googlebot had got there first, Googlebot indexed and cached the page and went on it’s merry way. So even thought the company had taken corrective action the page was still available through Google’s cache.
The company is now in the process of contacting Google to get them to remove the page from their cache.
I didn’t have the heart to ring in and mention the WayBack Machine and other ways in which this page could still exist out in the wild.
I found it interesting that for the callers, Google is the internet.
Unfortunately they didn’t give out enough information for me the find the page on Google 
