No Internet access whatsoever at work and a lack of networked printers has me scrambling for a way to bring some work home with me. I know, I think to myself, I’ll use a floppy.

(Note to readers: The so-called floppy disk is something We Who Were Alive During the Carter Administration used in our pre-Internet computer classes in high school to carry data back and forth between computers. Wiki has an in-depth definition here, but it’s easy to just pretend I’m talking about a type of CD with just a tiny bit of storage space that was easily erased with a fridge magnet).

My pre-1997 Mac at work has a floppy drive, and I know it can read Microsoft DOS-formatted diskettes, so that’s what I’ll do: copy the work to a floppy disk to bring it home.

Just overheard at my house:
Sean: Shawn, do you have a floppy disk?
Shawn: Um, a what? Look in the box marked ‘Computer’ in the closet.

Thought Process Inside Sean’s Head (T’PISH): OK. If I can find a floppy disk, how will I read it? Four laptops in this house, and not a single one has a floppy disk drive. Maybe the really old one that I bought in 2000 when I went back to school has an optional floppy disk drive, but where would I have put it five years ago?
(End T’PISH)

Since the technology options in my office are limited, looks like I’ll be making a trip to Kinko’s, where I can e-mail the contents of my floppy disk (assuming I ever find one) to my home e-mail address, ’cause there is clearly a technology deficiency up in my office.