Portable storage

When we were preparing the lab for renovation, I came across this case:

Any guesses as to what this is? I'll give you a hint: It's just a bit over 3.5" on each edge of the square. Give up? Well, here it is, modelling two floppies from my collection:

That's right -- it's a 3.5" floppy disk carrying case. [Given that one of those is an AOL install disk, I feel it's important to mention Jonathan/Yoni's truly impressive AOL CD collection, which I do not believe has ever been featured on this blog. The quantity of CDs he's gathered is so huge it's probably quickest to count them by weight.]

But, it gets better. When I first opened the case, it wasn't carrying my diskettes. It was carrying this:

A shaped-just-like-a-diskette (SJLAD). Much like the shaped-just-like-a-PCMCIA-cards (SJLAPCMCIAC) that used to be included with all laptops before they invented USB and integrated NICs/WiFi adaptors. However, my netbook has a modern version of this, the shaped-just-like-an-SD-card:

It's to stick into the SD slot on the computer when travelling, to minimize the amount of gunk that gets into it. The SJLAD [and SJLAPCMCIAC] was for the same purpose:

and also included these helpful instructions:

It's kinda cool how although the physical size and storage capacity of portable storage devices has changed over the years, we always seem to need the SJLA____. I wonder what the next one will be...