Mystery- how has my old nano been updated with my new playlists in iTunes when I haven't synced it?

Question

I got given a 2gb nano in 2005, which I filled up with imported cd music, not wanting an Apple account and not wanting to pay for music that I already have on cd (was in music industry for years, and like to own the physical product rather than a download that then needs backing up). Anway, lovely bf has bought me a 7th gen 160gb pod for Xmas, so I was merrily organising playlists and preparing to load the whole 45gb of music onto my new shiny ipod. Got my old nano out yesterday, and found that all the playlists that were there have been replaced by the first few new playlists I've made in iTunes. I am not using Match, or thieving Cloud, and I haven't had the nano anywhere near the computer for the last 3 or 4 years! I don't remember registering the nano with Apple, but the new one has definitely been registered (several conversations with Apple because Amazon sent us a "new" iPod that had already been opened, language and clock set to Australian time (the London clock said 9.47pm  YESTERDAY), and replaced it with another "new" one with the same issues (replacement hadn't even been shrinkwrapped, just the bare and slightly battered box).
Is this something that the cloud has done? And if so, how come it's done it to my baby nano, and not to the new Classic 160gb? It means it ran out of space, so effectively it's wiped off all the music that has been on there for years, and replaced it with as much as it could fit on, working from the top of the playlist list........
Having read about how the cloud nicks things and won't let you access them if you disconnect from cloud (not that I'm aware of having connected to the **** thing anyway), I'm now going to have to do a back up so that when I tell cloud to bog off, I can still copy any missing music back into iTunes.
Has anyone got an explanation for how my nano's content has been changed without me doing anything except changing my playlists in iTunes, and has it happened to anyone else?
Also, why did nobody at Apple stop to thing that "pushing" data to all your Apple devices is bound to cause problems when each device's capacity is so different from the others? My iPad is the first and small one (32gb I think), the nano is 2gb, my new Pod is 160gb, and what's in iTunes is 35gb. It's also tried to put my music library onto the iPad, announced there wasn't room (I had already selectively downloaded some music on to it when I got it 2 years ago), and wiped off all the music that was on that. It currently says there's nothing on it BUT also says it's full. I'm not very happy with Apple at the moment!
The only device listed in iTunes is the iPad, dated as Xmas 2010. Should I remove that from there?
iTunes is ALWAYS set to "prevent automatic sync" because until now, I haven't had a device with sufficient capacity to put the whole library on to, so even if I had plugged the nano in, I would have had to have selected the whole library in order for this mysterious over-writing to have happened.
Answers, anyone?
Thanks in advance :-)
Nikki

Answer 1

When iTunes removed the ping feature they replaced it with an internal check on feeds - based on the frequency of new episodes - so your feed may take a week or more to show up the changes.
http://www.nobodydanceshere.com/blog/feed/podcast/
Looking at your feed it is showing a last build date of 5/26/2012 - so the next time iTunes checks your feed it should update your info. 
But since it has been since 2010 since your last update - you do need to wait a bit before iTunes checks your feed again.