One of my USB thumb drives went through the wash. My wife let me know today, but I suspected that's what had happened, as the last place I remember having it was in the pocket of my jeans. It's a "1 GB CHINA" drive according to the foil sticker. I got it free in a press kit from the TD Jazz Festival. It still works. Contrast that with the extreme care we used to take with 5.25" floppy disks back in the 1980s. They came in non-abrasive sleeves, and we were so careful never to touch the exposed magnetic surface. Never bend, never flex, never keep in sunlight, don't smoke around them, don't get them wet, don't feed them after midnight. They were precious vessels that carried, what, 160k to 1.2 MB at best. In its time, a big ass floppy was the pinnacle of available technology, but it was fragile. But this one-gigabyte gadget went through the wash and survived. I had a Blackberry pager -- one of the original ones, mind you, with the little black and