One of the miracles of modern information technology is the fact that one can maintain calendar, contacts, e-mail and so forth on one’s PDA, and have it automatically update on one’s computer, and vice-versa. I used to use Outlook for this, but after a major Outlook meltdown from which I never recovered, I switched to Google, which works fairly well for me.
But, as we Catholics well know, miracles tend to be accompanied by mysteries. And one of the mysteries attending this miracle is this: For some reason, my Google calendar takes note of some people’s birthdays, and not others. What I mean is, it does this spontaneously. There are some — families, close co-workers — whose birthdays I’ve entered onto my calendar, with the annual repetition feature. Others just crop up on their own. This has something to do with the interface between Calendar and Facebook on my Blackberry, but why it picks SOME people’s birthdays to take note of and not others, I have no idea. Probably something to do with the way they set their profile settings on Facebook, but as I say, I don’t know. That’s why it’s a mystery.
Another mystery is this: Sometimes these folks’ birthdays appear on my calendar more than once. Why, I don’t know. I finally figured out that when you reload your contact files onto a platform (because of technical problems such as the aforementioned Outlook meltdown), the contacts will sometimes duplicate. And weirdly, it’s only SOME of the contacts. Some of them will only be there once, others will be double, and still others will appear five or six times. Another mystery.
But I take note of this today because a record has been set. When I came back from England and started trying to get my calendar for January in order last week, I couldn’t even SEE the calendar items for this week, because the entire laptop screen was taken up with repeated notifications of Sammy Fretwell‘s birthday. In fact, “Sammy Fretwell’s Birthday” appeared 45 times at the top of my calendar — I counted them as I deleted them (or, all but one of them — wouldn’t want to forget your birthday, Sammy).
Fortunately, I caught this before the reminders started going off on my Blackberry. Previously, when I’ve had multiple notices of someone’s birthday, I’ve had to click “dismiss” on every one of them, one after the other, before I can use the device.
Now, Sammy and I are buds, and I’m happy for him that it’s his big day. But I really didn’t need to be reminded of it 45 times. Why did this happen? It’s a mystery.
Now that I’ve typed this, one more thing to do: I need to go say “Happy Birthday” to Sammy…
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Doesn’t the BB Facebook app have its own calendar that (stupidly) sets itself as the default calendar? At least, I think that used to be the case. Could be that your Google and Facebook calendars are locked in a default calendar re-synchronization power struggle.