Monday, February 23, 2009

Carefully closing the barn door

I had a first rate scare today. It was one of those situations when all you can think about is, "What could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? What can I do now?"

The immediate incident was the loss of my pda (personal data assistant) somewhere in Old Town Sacramento, sometime this afternoon. And that was about as far as I could definitely trace it. I find that I refer to the pda less and less so I couldn't recall using it for the whole afternoon, the whole day for that matter. And we had gone all over the place - from the Stanford Mansion to Fat City Cafe to the Railroad Museum.

My first thoughts were damage control/worst case analysis thoughts. What if someone gets all the names and addresses and starts calling the names on my contact list. There's little if any confidential information such as Social Security Numbers but there's certainly the nuisance factor. There's also the inconvenience or impossibility of reconstruction all the personal data in the PDS.

My second thoughts were on recovery strategy - what would be the highest prioritiies in trying to find the PDA and how could I maximize the probability of finding it. Would I advertise? Would it help?

Fortunately, the first place we inquired was the Railroad Museum. When I asked if they had a lost and found you'd have thought I had announced a reward for something (come to think of it, maybe I should have). They responded with "Why? Have you lost something?" When I described my loss, again the response was one of relief and gratefulness, just exactly the response I should have shown. Yes, it had been found and turned in. No, it was not damaged or compromised.

Now the question is, "Will I pay any attention to those questions about doing things differently?"

No comments:

Post a Comment