Bleak Outlook

Although I knew I didn't have time to do the whole "long ride" this morning, I went out to meet the group at 6:15 anyway. The plan was to ride out to the regular short ride turnaround with the group and then ride back solo so I'd be back in time to make a meeting first thing in the morning. For some reason the group was a little reluctant to get going this morning. I started out at a moderate pace but the rest of the group just kept falling behind. Now you have to understand that I was not exactly in time trial mode or anything. I started out at around 20 mph and ended up at maybe 23-24 mph, so the group was just kind of slow to get rolling today. Unfortunately I didn't have the same luxury, so I kept rolling solo. Just as I got to the parish line where we usually turn around on the "short" days, the group, led by VJ, finally passed me. Ah well. I hope they didn't think I was being antisocial. So I was back at home in time to make my morning meeting. That meeting was for the people whose departments, like mine, had volunteered to be part of the pilot group for the university's transition to Microsoft Exchange for email, scheduling, etc. So the meeting was a blast, since almost everyone there was tech-oriented, and I went back to my office kind of fired up about the whole thing. My 1:00 I had made a run out to Circuit City to pick up a new Palm Pilot so that my transition to the new scheduling system would go smoothly. Ha!

After letting the new Palm t/x charge for a couple of hours I set about the process to transfer my contacts and calendar data from my old Palm to the new one. After that, I would have to change things so that the palm pilot would sync with Microsoft Outlook instead of Palm Desktop. Should have been a fairly simple thing to do, right? Well, the first part went fine and I was able to get all of my Palm data moved from my old Palm desktop software into my new Palm Pilot. The handheld would sync with the desktop Palm Desktop software just fine. After that it was all downhill. The new palm pilot would not sync with Microsoft Outlook. Well, actually it would sync for some things, but for all of the important stuff -- calendar, memos, contacts -- it would fail every time. The whole reason I had gotten the new PalmPilot was because it came with the software to sync with Outlook, which I will be using beginning Monday for all of my email and scheduling when my Tulane email gets redirected to the new Exchange server. I wish I could say I was surprised, but frankly I had a feeling I would run into a problem. After an hour of nonproductive experimentation, I finally resorted to calling the Palm tech support line. That resulted in a one-hour phone call, complete reinstallation of all of the Palm software on the machine, etc. and absolutely no success. The Palm folks passed the buck to Outlook. So next I will have to uninstall Outlook and then reinstall it and hope that whatever is broken is fixed. I am not feeling too optimistic about it. On the plus side, the Palm TX is pretty nice. For under $300, it is wifi capable and had no trouble connecting to my home wireless network, so I have high hopes there at least.

I need to work out something tomorrow so I can get myself up to Monroe this weekend. Jason said a few of the guys were planning on going but I just haven't had a chance to see if I can hitch a ride with someone.