(Frustration)²

My easy recovery ride this morning turned out to be about the high point of the day today. You see, today was the day that my office email was being switched over to the Microsoft Exchange server. So first thing in the morning I set up outlook to talk to the new server and retrieve my mail. It worked OK, but trying to get the contact list and old email imported into Outlook was a royal PITA, to say the least. Despite uninstalling and reinstalling Outlook, the damned thing still won't sync with my Palm Pilot. Then I realized that Outlook was set up to delete the mail from the server each time it was checked, which would mean I couldn't get to it from home, so I had to basically start all over again.

It was about that time that The Wife called from the parking garage where she and a few other people were trying to extricate a kitten from the engine compartment of someone's car. The cat had been in there all the way from LaPlace, apparently. We called in the SPCA, and for the next couple of hours he and I disassembled the wheel well and stone guard with a pair of lousy pliers. It was extremely frustrating. Every time we would gain access to a new space, we would find it empty. We could hear the cat the whole time, but couldn't see it. Finally we found that it had wedged itself up into the bodywork above the fender and there was no way we were going to be able to get it out with the tools we had, so we sent the owner and The Wife down to the local body shop. The folks at the body shop thought this was a great challenge and they all dropped what they were doing to help. They had to remove the entire fender and then basically blow the kitten out of the compartment she was in with compressed air. Anyway, I guess the cat is back in LaPlace this evening. Frankly, I think she had a better day than I.

So I basically wasted the entire day fooling with Outlook to no avail and not quite rescuing a cat. When I got home I figured I'd see if I could get the laptop to check mail on the Exchange server. First, Outlook crashes when I try to run it and comes back telling me it needs to be updated, so I go to the Office Update site as instructed and wait half an hour for it to download a huge amount of software. It finally all gets installed and I run Outlook again, and it just locks up. WTF? Anyway, this whole Outlook / Exchange thing is not exactly going smoothly for me. Actually, it's not going at all and I am not a happy camper, especially considering that it has put me behind by another day on some work that absolutely has to be done by Thursday. Did I mention that my email and voicemail to the tech support person assigned to this little transition has yet to respond to either?