Sunday, February 11, 2007

Schrödinger's Outlook Calendar Entry

It has come to my attention that for periods of time, certain of my Outlook calendar entries are in a state of super quantum superposition, in that they are both scheduled and unscheduled at the same time. The state comes about when I've sent off several messages to people that I'm planning to meet with at some time in the near future (lets say within the week) and since I'm dealing with a finite resource (my schedulable hours this week), many of my announced available times overlap between meeting invitees. So, any specific entry may be:

  1. Unscheduled (no invitee has decided to take this spot)
  2. Claimed by one or more of several invitees (hence super quantum superposition)
Before I am able to get to my email and read the various responses, this means that the unobserved calendar entry is both unallocated, allocated and super allocated (everybody wanted Wednesday at 10:00.) According to the Copenhagen interpretation, My simple observational act of reading my email will coincide with the collapse of the wave function and resolve my schedule into something Microsoft Office can express. (That is unless you prefer to believe that non-conscious observers - in this case Microsoft Office - alter the quantum state of the observed phenomenon. If that's true, Microsoft Office is changing our reality at the quantum level millions of times per second. Try not to think about it.)

Now you know my problem. If I miss a meeting with you, it's because I was simultaneously also scheduled to be having tea with the Society for the Elimination of Annoying Car Sqeaky Sounds and saving a cat in a box with a radiation source nearby from certain doom. It's NOT because my scheduling habits are disorganized.

NOTE: The "laws" of "physics" portrayed in this note should have almost no resemblance to Schrödinger's "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik." Precisely, the similarities are:
  • Use of the verb "know" although not in the same context.
  • Reference to a cat, though mine was strictly to try and gain the reader's sympathy in the case where I stood/stand the reader up for a meeting (and attend it.)
  • Improper use of comma splices.
Since I don't look at my blog logs, the entire planet has read and not read this entry. I'm VERY popular and ignored.

1 comment:

Cassie Wallender said...

I wish I had written this blog post first. Epic win.