Its time for back to school!

Arg, I go back to college next week and with my summer class schedule it always just seems cruel how I only get two weeks off between semesters. I know all the kids in town head back to school next week too, and I am currently feeling their pain.

I'm always trying to compensate for the back to school blahs with finding great supplies that look awesome. I still get just as excited over the cool pins or great notebooks as I did when I was in second grade, and its still a yearly ritual to go search out the coolest supplies that last weekend before school starts. I think its therapeutic, as when your just having a bad day at school or that incredibly boring math teacher is about to put you to sleep, you can at least entertain yourself looking at all your cool gear. At least that's the case as far as I'm concerned.

With kids its almost a fashion statement to show up with great gear. I'm not sure about you guys but in Montgomery, all the kids wear school uniforms which I whole heartily agree with especially from a financial standpoint, but it does sort of take away from each child's own creative expression. Mind you I am not babbling randomly, I do have a point to this little lecture.

USB drives may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to really cool back to school gear, or not one of the first things you think of at all. However, having a USB drive is an important fact of life not only for the school kids, but its a handy little gadget that anyone with a computer should own. I actually own several, one for my own personal use, a school drive, and one that I store all my most important files on. They are small, totally portable, and VERY affordable, there is really no reason why everyone shouldn't have one.

Sandisk's new line of Sandisk Cruizer Pattern USB Flash Drives are not only very affordable at about $15 for a 2gig drive but they look awesome. I keep mine on a key chain attached to the inside of my backpack and store backups of all my school papers, forms, homework, and even pictures of Connor for those days I wonder why on earth am I even going to school. When I'm having a particuarlly bad day looking at his little face really grounds me and reminds me of why I am doing what I'm doing.

The Sandisk Cruizer line also features U3 technology, meaning you can actually load and run U3 compatible software directly from your USB drive. This means you can load any U3 compatible program onto the USB drive and take it anywhere with you. You can then run those programs directly off the USB drive without having to install the software on the computers you use your drive on. Personally I carry around a few Big Fish Games, Firefox with all my bookmarks, and Trillian (a universal chat program so I can access my aol im, yahoo, and msn all at the same time from any computer).

The Sandisk Cruzier Pattern comes in Black (2gig) and Grey (1gig) you can find them on Amazon as well as I saw them last weekend at Circuit City!