On a recent trip to London, I faced with the following situation.
I had an important document submission pending and I was hoping to return from my trip and submit it. With the remote possibility of my working on it during my trip, I decided to upload the document and the associated files on a USB flash drive and carry it with me.
The day before I was to return, there was a news flash saying that all flights out of the UK were grounded indefinitely. This meant several things to me. One, that I was going to be in London for a while. Two, I would not be able to return home in time to work on my submission. Three, I would have to work on my document right away. With one message conveying several senses about my current status, I decided to get into action and turned to my laptop. As I turned it on, I was not greeted by the usual desktop adorned with all the paraphernalia in it. On the contrary, she failed to boot. For an instance, I had the faint feeling of sinking into a bottomless pit. But I managed to come out of it very quickly thanks to the USB flash drive that was snugly ensconced in my bag.
I was attending a conference and there were computers for use by the delegates. When I was not at a session (say during a lunch break) I decided to put the spare time to good use and began working on my document. I had the necessary files, alright. But what about the program `Latex' that I needed to use to compile my document into its final form? The local computers did not have it, obviously, and having no administrative privileges, there was no way in which I could install it locally. After some googling around, I found out that I would be able to compile my document on an online portal- Scribtex.com for free. Thanks to its intuitive user-interface I got started on the compilation and after several editions, my document was done.
Viva el USB Flash drive and viva Scribtex...
Need I say more on the little gizmo that I will treasure for some time to come? This important task of mine would not have been accomplished, but for these little treasures.
