The Attack of the 5" Floppies!

Originally posted as a part of ih8cgs.freeservers.com. When it became quite evident that nobody hated CGS quite as much as me, I closed the site and opened Taftese.

One of the things that has irked me since the day I arrived at BU was how student-unfriendly our school is. It's everything from our strict policy of only being allowed 5 guests a semester to the little things like being charged $2.75 for one load of laundry to be washed and dried. And it's not like they're real quality machines, either. To steal from a popular e-mail circulating about college dorm life, "I could fart on my clothes and they'd be drier."

Now, I live in a brownstone, so I can't use the convenience points that Warren Towers students can use... so every time I have to do a load of laundry, I have to find $5.00 to $8.00 in quarters (which, for those of you like me who cannot do math, is 20 to 32 quarters. I am not a video arcade. I do not have 20-32 quarters with me at all times. So, each week, on laundry day, I go through the following steps:

1. Check my quarter collection of the week. Total number of quarters: usually 8.
2. Go to towers to get change. Find that the machine is out of order. Total quarters: 8
3. Go to CampCo to get change. "Can I have $5 in quarters?" "No." "How bout 3?" "OK." Total number of quarters: 20.
4. Go to CampCo wearing a hat. "Can I have $5 in quarters?" "Weren't you just in here?" "No, he wasn't wearing a hat." "Oh, right." Total number of quarters: 40. (Note: He gives $5 in quarters to the guy in the hat).

Then my laundry proceeds to get washed. However, the laundry is not my only complaint. Since this is supposed to be a CGS - specific column, I will talk about what is not student friendly about CGS:

The library. Yes, we have one. Insert your own "It's filled with Dr. Seuss books" joke here: __________________. First of all, there is no Xerox machine in the library, probably because the BU faculty is afraid that we will accidentally blind ourselves when we make photocopies. But the biggest problem with not having a photocopy machine in the CGS library is that one will overhear conversations like this happening quite often:

STUDENT: I need to make some photocopies from this book.
GUY BEHIND COUNTER: You can't. There's no photocopy machine in here. There's one in SFA, though.
STUDENT: Oh, OK. Well, I'll bring it to SFA then.
GUY BEHIND COUNTER: You can't. You have to check it out if you want to bring it to SFA.
STUDENT: OK, I'll check it out then.
GUY BEHIND COUNTER: You can't. That's a reference book; you can't check that out.
STUDENT: But I don't need it for long... I just need to make some photocopies.
GUY BEHIND COUNTER: You can't. There's no photocopy machine here....

As you can see, it is rather a vicious cycle. So, often what will end up happening is that the student will either: 1. Go to the real library (where you can occasionally find a CGS student). or 2. Attempt to type up what he/she needs in the dazzling CGS computer lab!!!!

The CGS computer lab consists of about 14 computers, usually 3 of which are working. These are the most ghetto computers that have ever existed in the recent history of colleges. They consist of a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a floppy drive. That's it. I don't use a floppy drive because their massive contents can hold approximately 1 text file. I use an Iomega™ ZIP® drive because their 100 MB disks can hold an infinite number of text files, not to mention other bare essentials (i.e., MP3's and pornography. I mean, MP3's. Just MP3's.) So of course I was delighted to go into the computer lab my first week of school and find that I could not print up a text file because it was on a "ZIP" disk, which every other computer lab on campus has. This lack of a ZIP drive made me really mad, because it caused me to have to use an actual excuse for turning something in late, instead of a valuable lie. You can only lie so many times to your professors. Once I told my teacher that my grandmother died... 7 times. Let this be a lesson to you all.

Anyway, if you have never been to the CGS computer lab, I suggest you go. It is a trip, if nothing, to see the ghetto computers and the box of 5" floppy disks. Yes, 5" floppy disks. The disks most of you use now are 3.5" disks (or, 8.89 cm disques, eh? for you Canadians reading). I expect that the 5" disks contain old arcade games that you could only play on an Apple IIe, and that the science faculty hooks them up to an converter attached to the ghetto computers in the CGS lab and play "Asteroids" all night.

But that's what I just think.

Keep on goading until next week, amigos.

28 January 2000