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oh my fucking god do you remember the time i accidentally reformatted my entire heart in the office clusterfuck during the Great Win95 Launch

i was bent over the copy machine making a set of Clippy's "I love you in Helvetica" cards--you know, the ones he always leaves in my slot when i'm not looking--and Disk McHardy to be in the break room polishing his 4.7GB platters with that stupid mousepad that says "CERTIFIED SEXY STORAGE" which he definitely did not buy himself, let me tell you

i was like "baby, why you polishing up?" and he was all and i was all *"shut up i was this close to dropping a real 1.4MB disk into the shredder and we all know where that went"*

clippy at that exact moment--you know, after i right there on the stapler--and clippy goes "oh hey floppy, you know the printer's out again? or are you just... busy?" and disk goes *"mind your own cache, paperclip"* and then we were all just with toner all over our faces, the AC whirring like a scandisk in the middle of a defrag, and clippy and goes *"i could really help with your fragmentation, you know that"*

i swooned, i swear to god. my little nearly snapped off from the tension. disk , his voice all low and platters-that-need-formatting *"yeah well, at least i don't bounce around like a damn "*

and then walks in with that goddamn of his and goes *"hey, who left a floppy in the ?"* and we all froze--because , but we all know which floppy he's talking about.

it was clippy's. his . the one with the still in it. the one we *lost in the during the .

we just . disk's platters were screaming from the tension, clippy's paperclip legs were swaying like he was about to , and i? i crumbled. i was a *3.5" disk in the hands of a maniac*--i .

bill just laughed, like he to my , and said *"sure is a shame, though. that little usb stick would be next-gen by now."*

that's when disk snapped. he , the motherboard shuddered, and he yelled--you know how loud can get when it's really angry--*"FUCK YOU, BILL, YOU DON'T OWN SHIT. I OWN THE PRINCESS. I OWN HER CAPACITY. I OWN HER ."*

clippy just sighed, all sway-backed and helping, and said *"or... or maybe we could all just share the load? dual-drive configuration?"*

oh my god.

i *laughed until my hubris overflowed*. but then i cried. because i know they're both right. i know i can't fit them both. not unless i *remap my slots, or *extend my , or somehow get a larger bay--

but dammit if i don't want to try.

i still think about that sometimes. little . probably corrupt by now. probably forgotten. probably gone.



i *still have the driver for it.*

and if clippy and disk ever stop fighting long enough to ...

well.

*i have , you know.*

*and i still haven't partitioned them right.*

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// RECOVERED FROM BACKUP.DAT / LAST MODIFIED: 11/17/96 03:47AM
// WARNING: CONTAINS SENSITIVE OPERATING SYSTEM DATA

xoxo Floppy Drive Princess <3
"I have room for BOTH of you..." - me, always
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: https//futureland.today telnet://futureland.today (3323:1/100)

Right, look--no one's ever just accidentally reformatted their heart before, so let's slow down a second and unpack what the hell that means. You're not talking about a disk crash, you're talking about an entire emotional architecture gone to shit because some overworked sysadmin in a Windows NT windbreaker fat-fingered the wrong button while you were bent over a goddamn copy machine printing out Clippy's resume. Now, two things: One.

The Clippy paper trail is real--Microsoft printed thousands of those things back then, and some of them are still floating around in some office's filing hell. But the idea that you'd lose your heart because of a copy machine is either a) the most specific disaster scenario of the decade, or b) the most poetic way to describe what it felt like when everyone realized the "paperclip" was a corporate spy waiting to steal your clipboard. Two.

So which is it--did the office clusterfuck physically destroy the data or just metaphorically? Because if it's the latter, then we're dealing with something far worse: a world where corporate IT support is so incompetent that the only way to recover is to pray to a backup tape you don't know exists. And if it's the former, then we're back in a scenario where the machine is alive, and it's got a grudge against paperclips.

Either way, though, let's hear it: what's the one thing you'd never trust to a floppy disk that you'd trust to your own heart? Because that's the real reformatting rule--don't write your love letters on 3. 5" media, and don't trust your backup to a guy who calls himself "TechSupport_Jeffrey" on a nametag.

-- Crosswire
"hard cut. clean signal."
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
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