There is a saying in German “Man trifft sich zwei mal im Leben”, which means so much as “You always meet twice”. I don’t know what your first thoughts are when you read these words. I always took them as true advice to treat every person you ever meet well because you’ll never know in what situation you’ll meet them again. For meeting them, you will. In other words, in the sense of never burn any bridges. Karma is a bitch. I absolutely believe that. What goes around, comes around, eventually.

However, just a month ago I met an old friend (not), who I thought I would never ever see again: Outlook

I can remember for my first job that involved a lot of email communication, coming from clunky webmail, I was out of my mind happy to use Outlook. I could finally write emails just like I wrote a letter in Word. I would have a calendar and task reminders, and…
Well, yes and an ever-growing archive file that included all my saved emails (*.pst). To save valuable hard disk space (the olden days…) you had to be brave and delete the ones you didn’t deem important. And because it was impossible to find even the ones you kept ever again, you had to print out important emails and file them at physical locations. Well, then Gmail came around with the promise you’d never have to delete an email again, with filters, labels, the possibility to use Gmail with your company’s email address (Send via Gmail), with plugins like active inbox , and so much more. Life was good.

After almost a decade without it, I was sure I would never have to use Outlook again. In fact, I didn’t know Outlook was still around. But you know, you always meet twice.

One new job later and there it sits on my computer. And not much has changed. (more…)