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What To Do With 78 USB Drives Next Christmas?

Posted by timothy on from the channel-the-mind-of-a-giftee dept.

ArfBrookwood writes "Every year, I write a Christmas Letter and send it to about 50 people, and every year, it's different. One year it was just the word blah blah blah over and over with keywords, one year I made papercraft wallets with full color cards and money in them, another year I created a Christmas Letter writing contest that instructed the recipients to create our Christmas Letter for us and we awarded prizes to winners, last year, I took a fake retro photo of my family, Inkscaped/GIMPed in a chemistry set and some wall art, printed it onto CD covers, and burned retro Christmas songs onto digital vinyl and sent everyone in the family what looked like a miniature Christmas album. Last week, I came into the possession of 78 2GB USB drives. I have already taken the time to wipe them clean and reflash the memory so they are blank slates." Now, Arf's looking for suggestions for how to best use all these drives; read on for more.
"My first inclination was to remove the USB drives from their careful packaging and plastic enclosures, dump them into a slurry of glue and rock dust, sandpaper the USB port to make it look ancient, and then make some videos or include some oddly formatted numbered/whatever text files to make them look like they cam from some dystopian wasteland fallout-3 type future and then package them in envelopes that looked like they were from some central futuristic government post office. The idea would be that in the future, incidents that happened this year would have had a profound affect on the future. I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule — I have to outdo whatever I did the last year."

10 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Put a by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Put a customized Linux distro on each one with people's names as login names, etc.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  2. USB Christmas Tree! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do the USB drives have usage lights?

    1.Remove them from their casing, exposing their green PCB organs.
    2.Buy a stack of USB hubs, and chain them together. Plug your usb drives into the hubs.
    3.Arrange the usb drives in the form of a chrismas tree.
    4.Set up a program to access the flash drives at random, causing their usage lights to flash.

    Et Voila, flashing usb christmas tree!

  3. Books by goldaryn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe put some books on them?

    I checked, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is on there ;-)

    I'm sure they'd appreciate a donation if you do. They do a great job.

  4. Use some Social Engineering by Nitewing98 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd label each one "Do Not Use This Drive." I'd put a program on it labelled, "Do Not Open This Program." Create the program so that it causes their mail client to email you from their email account. See how many emails you get. This would be a good opportunity to teach them how they can protect themselves from data theft, trojans, etc.

    --

    Nitewing '98

    Everything works...in theory.

  5. Re:Two things. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Virtual advent calendar: Pictures of your family for Christmas, home movies, etc, each encrypted with a different key you send to your recipients on each day in December leading to Christmas Day.

  6. Be useful. by stego · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do something actually useful. Donate'em to an inner city middle school.

    1. Re:Be useful. by jgordon510 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We'll take them. Elementary school with 80% free/reduced lunch. We tried to buy flash drives for all our fifth graders so they could work on their state reports at home and the public library. We found a vendor selling 1gig drives for $3.00 each, ordered 75 of them, and were told that they only had 3 available at that price. Anyway, if you send them to us, I'll have the kids write your christmas cards for you. How's that?

    2. Re:Be useful. by ArfBrookwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you send me your contact information I would seriously consider it. This would save me LOTS of time.

  7. Unusual Christmas Cards by hack++slash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule â" I have to outdo whatever I did the last year.

    I fear I've fallen into that trap too, last year I made some edge lit christmas cards but instead of using coin batteries I included twisted white wire with a soldered USB plug so the card will never run out of power (unless you switch your PC off). Just about everyone who received one loved it.

    This year I'm planning on doing another edge lit card but with several layers, powered by a SMD PICAXE chip embedded into the card for animation, flashing, sequencing or whatever I decide.

    The year after next I may do yet another USB powered edge lit card but include a flash drive for a christmas video or something *shrug* hopefully I'll get some good ideas from this topic :)

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
  8. Re:Two things. by SpottedKuh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pictures of your family for Christmas, home movies, etc, each encrypted with a different key you send to your recipients on each day in December [...]

    I would use password-based cryptography, instead of sending them actual cryptographic keys by e-mail. Not only is it easier for the recipients, but you could choose fairly weak, Christmas-themed passwords (e.g., "snowflake," "cookie," "Santa," etc.). That way, the "peekers" in the family could try to guess the passwords in advance!

    And I agree whole-heartily with the GP: make the USB drives into some sort of ornament. You could even use coloured pipe cleaners and those goofy stick-on eyes to make the USB keys look like reindeer. That way, the drives don't go to waste.