Today is not a good day. It’s a fairly normal Tuesday – up at 05:00, leave the house at 05:30 to avoid the traffic and be in the office in London (Docklands) by about 07:00; except that I was hungry, it took 15 minutes to get served at the MacDonalds drive thru’ (call that fast food?) and now I’m at my desk I’ve found that I left my notebook PC at home. Arghhhhh!

I hadn’t realised before that I can’t work without my notebook PC. This office doesn’t have any general use desktop PCs – just hot desks for mobile/notebook users; and my data isn’t on the network either – it’s on my PC and backed up to DVD and external hard disks at home. I feel like I’ve lost a limb (well, if I had really lost a limb I’m sure it would be much, much worse, but I’m sure you get my drift).

I can’t go home to pick it up because south-east England will be snarled up with traffic now, making it a 4-hour round trip (and I have a meeting at 10:30). Luckily, I’ve managed to borrow a notebook from one of the guys in the office for a few hours.

So, for the next 3 hours it’s Microsoft Exchange via Outlook Web Access and picking out tasks that don’t require access to my existing data. Then, after my meeting, I can make the 160-mile round trip to retrieve my lost limb and pick up my work where I left off previously before making my way to the hotel and this evening’s appointments. Now, what was I saying about not trusting Web 2.0 sites to hold my data? Alternatively, maybe I should start to work from home 5 days a week instead of just 2…