If you don't know where you're going

Update: After all that it turned out to be trivial to restore them from within Gmail and they've happily synced back to my phone now :) Thanks pir!

I still need to poke it in the right way to get them into Address Book without wiping again, but that's less of an immediate concern.

Original post:

Okay, I'm having epic tech fail lately and I've got my head twisted around so much that I need an outside observer to come in and tell me what I'm doing wrong, and what I need to do to fix it.

Problem: My iPhone and Gmail contacts have been wiped.

Background: I have my iPhone set up to sync contacts to Gmail via the Google Sync option, setting Google as an Exchange account on my phone. This generally works great, with some confusing discrepancies that don't seem to sync across.

What went wrong: I opened Address Book on my Mac, after having the hard drive replaced and reinstalled. Address Book was empty. I scratched my head, made sure the checkbox was ticked for syncing with Google, and fed it my password again. I remembered last time that it took a while having the address book open for it to sync up, so I left it be. Then I got a text from an "unknown number" and discovered that my phone had forgotten everyone except the few discrepancies that never synced back to Google in the first place.

Solution? I think the only way to fix it at this point is to do an iTunes restore. However, what do I do to prevent this happening again? What order to I need to turn things on, what settings do I need, to get it all syncing up merrily again? Before the HD crash, Address Book had my contacts happily synced so I know it must be possible, somehow. I don't want to get it all working again only to open Address Book and wipe it all over again.

If you can point me at an article that tells me exactly what to do and how then great. Googling for the topic is currently just confusing me further.

My mail server is currently down, in the middle of me considering switching my mail to Gmail/Google Apps. Yet more tech fail. So I'll get replies as and when, I suppose. I'll check back here tomorrow morning for definite, when I'll have time at home to try and fix this mess!

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I've been having a dilemma over who to vote for in the upcoming General Election, but I have now decided. Basically, it boils down to me historically supporting the Liberal Democrats and my views lining up more with theirs than any other main party. I've done the Vote for Policies quiz just to make sure I am indeed still in line with Lib Dem views and confirmed that I come out on the side of the Lib Dems, and Nick Clegg seems like an alright sort of chap who I wouldn't mind being in charge, especially when given the options of the other two.

However, my local MP Jeremy Corbyn is a pretty decent chap as well, but is inconveniently in the Labour party. I do not especially want the Labour party to continue in power (though I also don't support the Conservative party and don't really want to see them in power either), and I wanted to support Lib Dems nationally.

I've thought about it a lot, done a reasonable amount of research, and decided that I will be voting for the MP who I think will best represent me in my constituency, even if he is in the "wrong team". He's gone against the party whip a lot when he disagrees with Labour and I like that. I also like that he disagrees with them on much of the stuff I disagree with them on. I used the quite cool site TheyWorkForYou which conveniently has all four PPCs represented there, and again, came out on the side of Jeremy Corbyn. Also, he has held this seat since the year after I was born (1982), received 52% of the vote in the 2005 election, and is unlikely to be budged now, so my voting for Lib Dem isn't going to achieve much (and I'm sure the Lib Dem PPC for Islington North is a decent sort of guy as well, but he's awfully young and therefore inexperienced compared to Corbyn, so I'd have more confidence in the latter).

I like egadfly's Voting Algorithm, and I agree with strawberryfrog in this case that Jeremy Corbyn satisfies the first rule. So my decision has been made :)

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with the local election choice. I'm thinking of voting for the three Lib Dem candidates here instead. I applied for a postal vote to guard against not being able to make it for whatever reason on the day itself, so I want to have this decided and in the post by Tuesday.

I'm slowly trying to get my friends list into more manageable levels. I went away for a few days and even though I was actually checking LJ some of the time, I ended up with a friends page stretching back to skip 200. I can only hope that I do this whole "having a life" thing more often in the future, which leaves me even less time for LJ.

If I've defriended you recently, or if I do so in the future, it's probably not because I OMG HATE you or anything. Much more likely to be a combination of needing to make it smaller (both for reading and so I feel more comfortable writing here again, because it's been difficult sometimes recently), and not feeling as close to or having much in common with you as others on my list. I know I'll end up keeping people who I don't have much in common with or aren't really close to either, but I sometimes find it interesting being able to get a window in to people's lives that I would otherwise not get out in the real world. This list isn't a true reflection of who my friends are and who I like the best, so I hope people don't take it too personally and think that I like them less than random!person who's still on there or anything, because it's not quite how I use my friends list.

Being defriended always sucks (unless you've secretly been wanting to defriend that person yourself - for that matter, if you have secretly been wanting to defriend me, now is a good time to do it because I probably won't take it badly! Only don't all rush at once or I'll get paranoid >.>), and I'll probably manage to upset someone, but I do wish you all well, and if we cross each other's paths again in the future, I hope we do it on good terms.