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Time passes…

Progress marches on. On Thursday (I think it was), we got new USB flash drives from the school. Three years ago, they gave us 64 MB drives, which they’ve apparently continued to give to new students. I don’t believe I’d ever encountered such an animal three years ago, so they were a pleasant jump up from floppy disks (which have since gone the way of the dinosaurs).

These new drives are a whole 512 MB — 8 times the capacity of the old drives. Actually, that’s a lie. I formatted my new flash drive so that I could change the volume label to “J KALILICH” (which may be handy in case it ever gets lost), and in the process, I discovered that the drive has a capacity of about 514,000,000 bytes. You might think that that’s more than 512 MB, but since there are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte and 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte, it’s actually less. These drives do not have a capacity of 512 MB but rather around 490 MB. Filthy liars.

As for the actual physical appearance, it’s smaller than the old drives, and it’s black and like an oval or a squashed sphere. The old drives were clear purple, so you could see the insides. I thought that was kind of cool, but I value capacity more than looks, even if they lie about it.

This weekend was St. Elizabeth’s annual spring festival, which I’ve always made a point to go to. Ever since I went to school there, I’ve looked forward this time of year for the food, rides, games, food, live music, bingo, and food. Actually, the four-day event used to sort of coincide with the vernal equinox, but in recent years they’ve pushed it back by more than a month so that they won’t mix merriment with the somber season of Lent.

I decided to go yesterday, and I spent most of the day there. I hung out with Nick pretty much the whole time. When we weren’t covering for Nick’s mom, who had to leave for about a half an hour while she was working at the soda booth, we spent a lot of time at the youth group booth, which had a putting game. Nick challenged me to a putt-off, and on and off over the course of the day, we ended up taking 100 shots each. Nick got 50, and I got 37.

Toward the end of my stay, after it had gotten dark, an oldies-type cover band went on to play, and they were good. They reminded me of our band (currently dormant), which played at the festival from 2002 to 2004. It rekindled my idea that we should get back together for a gig before we all have to go off to college and stuff. It would be a reunion of all the original members, for old times’ sake. But Nick raised an objection that I hadn’t considered: he and Alex have never gotten along, and Nick still resents that Sean didn’t go to our last gig. (He didn’t go because he didn’t feel that the band was prepared — the five of us hadn’t all played together in a year.) Ah, such drama. Oh, also, Nick is also convinced that for any future gig, we have to have a keyboard player, even though this is supposed to be a sort of nostalgia thing, and we’ve never had a keyboard player. I’ll have to get him to settle his differences at least temporarily if this is going to work out. Also on the agenda: getting a venue, deciding a set, and actually talking to the other members of the band about this whole thing to see if they want to do it.

Scary stuff on Google Video: Tickle Me Elmo on Fire.

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