If, like me, you are a fan of the writings of the late Douglas Adams, you will understand that some  of his characters (well “one”, at least) is a firm believer that everything that happens in the world is somehow connected.  I started to agree with Dirk a couple of days ago when I suffered what can only be described as a catastrophic failure of my Outlook calendar.  Now right up front I would like to explain that I am not a fervid hater of all things written by Microsoft.  I realise that this could be a difficult thing to believe given that this is only the second entry on the website and I am once again about to have a fairly vicious dig at one of their products.  I shall try to defend myself by explaining that I have just spent some good money on a Microsoft Office product for my new Mac.  It wasn’t a lot of money, admittedly (company software purchase schemes apparently offer much bigger discounts than I had originally thought plausible), but nevertheless money left my pocket and software is due to arrive.  Anyway; returning to the calendar.  I have spoken to many people, some of whom have little plaques adorning their walls to prove that they are certified Microsoft IT professionals, but none of them seem to be able to explain how a well-stocked electronic calendar can suddenly allow its contents to evaporate from the face of the earth.  Incidentally, I usually try to keep such people away from my gadgets, because I have deep-rooted fear of what they might do to them.  In fact I must admit that I find the whole “little plaque on the wall” thing to be just a little bit sad, and I have often silently scoffed when I’ve seen them.

But if this sort of data loss has ever happened to you, then you may be able to understand some of the emotions which occur inside the mind of the hapless victim.  It’s not just a feeling of loss, but also feelings of dread, panic, humiliation, and disorientation.  And frankly, now that I’ve had the time to calm down and think about it, it’s all really rather pathetic.  I mean seriously – how much of a sad race of people have we become that we can suffer such levels of emotional distress when we suddenly become detached from our agendas?  It’s not new of course; I suspect that in days gone by the loss of a paper diary must have caused similarly stomach-churning feelings.  Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that I might just have gotten my priorities in life just ever so slightly wrong.  If I am left feeling so mentally scarred over a loss which is really rather trivial in the grand scheme of things, then perhaps I seriously ought to think about making a life altering decision.  Should I take the opportunity to vanish from my current job, and start a new life on a metaphorical desert island?  Nobody now knows what I should be doing at the moment, me included, so why the hell not?  Or should I change my career so that I am not so utterly dependant on a sad little schedule?  These, and many other similar questions, will now be roaming around my head for some time to come.

So anyway, once the initial shock had passed, I set about trying to restore the lost data using any means possible.  My first port of call was an iPod touch that was sitting next to me on the desk.  A faithful companion, which always carries a highly portable copy of said agenda.  And to my great relief I found that all of the missing calendar entries were showing on the screen having been previously synchronised, and my heart-rate began to normalise.  “Now don’t be a hasty idiot” I told myself, “you want to make sure that you don’t lose that as well.”  So, with an inappropriately confident and smug look on my face, I chose the option in iTunes to warn me when a sync operation would alter more than 5% of the device, and then plugged it in to the PC.  The sync operation completed, I checked Outlook’s Calendar, but I was more than slightly disturbed to find that there had been no apparent improvement to the situation.  Referring back to the iPod, I had a second colossal panic as I discovered that the mass data abscondment had now propagated itself to the iPod as well.  Google Calendar’s website?  No – blank.  Automated iPod backup?  No – blank.  So a warning to the masses – all of those clever software options which promise to guard against the loss of your data, or to warn you when you about to make major changes to your devices, are actually a complete load of old cobblers.  In fact they lie like a rebellious schoolboys, who know that telling the truth will surely result in the loss of their freedom and land them firmly in detention.

Cock!  I’d gotten two devices which were in a sorry state, and a bunch of backups which were equally knackered.  But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find a single trace of the good data.  And it soon dawned on me that the reason for this trail of destruction is that everything in our modern lives is equipped with an automatic synchronisation feature.  It’s fine technology when it works, and bloomin’ clever to behold for the majority of the time, but let me assure you that it’s an utter pain in the arse when it goes wrong.  Yes, our lives are now so interconnected, and the synchronisations happen so fast, that we really don’t have any hope of catching a problem when it all goes bad.  I wonder whether this sort of electronic calamity is actually any worse than when our ancestors used to lose their paper diaries?  The effect is the same for sure – you are left without the first flippin’ clue about what you are doing next week – but I can’t help but feel that having the frightfully depressing situation waved in one’s face by lots of different pieces of technology is perhaps slightly more irksome than it used to be.

So now I have to wait.  I’ve made a plea for help, and someone, somewhere, sitting in a little dark office with a little Microsoft plaque on his wall, is apparently trying to find my agenda on a backup disc in Munich.  And my goodness I hope he manages it.  I faithfully promise that I’ll never scoff again.