It’s been a couple of weeks since my lost post… and for good reason. I am just now able to cool my jets and write something coherent. And speaking of cool, God bless central air during this withering July afternoon in Chicago.

So as my opening implied, it’s been non-stop action for me these past couple of weeks. My work, in all its various forms, has reached a frantic pace. I managed, however, to throw in some fun activities to balance things out. You can’t have the yin without the yang, right? Well, you can, but why bother?

The place I’ve been contracting at for some time now in undergoing a massive e-mail migration project that finally hit on all cylinders this month. It involves a very diverse, multi-unit business consolidating from three e-mail platforms to one. Those three consist of Microsoft Exchange 5.5 (yes, Exchange 5.5!), Novell Groupwise (not sure what version), and Lotus Notes Mail. The unified messaging platform would be running on Microsoft Exchange 2003. It’s kind of scary to be, in 2006, finally upgrading to a product with “2003″ in the name. But if we survived on Exchange 5.5 for as long as we did, we’ll manage for quite some time on Exchange 2003.

My particular group was one of the ones on Exchange 5.5. We’d already done our client upgrades to Microsoft Office/Outlook 2003, but that was a cake walk compared to what remained for the actual back-end migration. Part of the migration involved vacuuming up all the Personal Folder Files (PSTs) that existed on individual PCs and network shares and putting them directly onto Exchange 2003. In an upcoming phase, archiving software will be switched on to enforce storage and retention policies. No more bulldozing stuff into PSTs for years and years. Group Policy is setup so that once a person has been migrated, their Outlook can’t open or import PSTs. I’ve already had many late nights as one of the chosen few trained to execute the exports from the 5.5 services and imports into the new Exchange 2003 mailboxes. The process has been setup to try and minimize disruptions to the user community, so we tend to do the batch migrations in the late afternoon.

Besides the “9-to-5″ stuff (really, 9-9 some days due to the migration), I’ve had a steady stream of work from my private client base. This includes several home networking installs, a small truckload of PC rebuilds and rescues, you name it. I won’t bore you with all the details of every gig I’ve had in these past two weeks, but each one went very well. And that usually means I’ll get some amount of referral work as a result. At one point, I had clients picking up their rebuilt PCs as other ones were dropping of sick laptops. I hope the neighbors don’t think anything hinky is going on.

Let’s not forget that all work, and no play makes Matt one burned out boy. In the midst of all this, I managed to weave in some time for unwinding and recreation. My wife, Monica, had her dearest friend, Stacy, come in from Tacoma (home of the “Tacoma Aroma”) and stay with us for five days. Mind you, when I mean friend, I mean the cry-when-she-arrives, ball-your-eyes-out-when-she-leaves type of friend. They were born one week apart and lived three doors down from each other in Moore, Oklahoma. And they were maids-of-honor in each others’ weddings.

So Monica took a couple days off so she’d have a four day weekend to spend with Stacy. I managed to parlay a Friday off because of the extended hours I’d worked earlier in the week. That Friday, we went to the Shedd Aquarium and hung out with all sorts of cool critters. The kinds that swim, crawl and slither. They’ve got a relatively new exhibit featuring lizards, topped off with a 6 ft, 120 lb. komodo dragon named Faust. My favorites to this day are the sea otters. Love those things. That evening, we went to a dinner party hosted by the CEO of one of the businesses I do freelance work for.

On Saturday, I kind of wove work and pleasure together with a trip up to Chicago’s north shore. I had three clients to tend to that day, so Monica and Stacy piled in the car with me and we drove up north. They dropped me off at my first client’s home, then they took the car to go, where else, shopping! This client had just moved to a new home and needed help reconnecting everything and getting their new high-speed Internet service going. As fate would have it, at&t hadn’t gotten their second line working, which was the line that would be used by their DSL service. So I did what I could, and promised to return after their second line and DSL service were both activated.

Stop #2 was just a couple of miles down the road. I had rebuilt a laptop for a client and figured I might as well drop it off since I was in the neighborhood. Stop #3 was also nearby, but as I knew it might take more than a few moments, I dropped Monica and Stacy off at, you guessed it, a shopping center. This client had some router woes, but I got them sorted out in about an hour. Before we headed back into the city, we treated ourselves to a late lunch at the country club where Monica used to work. That evening, we went to the Adler Planetarium for an evening showing of the short film, “SonicVision.” If you live around Chicago or plan to visit, I highly recommend this film. It is nothing if not eye popping.

On Sunday morning, the three of us enjoyed a cruise on the Chicago Architectural Foundation’s famous Chicago River cruise. You can check out my pix on Flickr. And then the girls went shopping. Detecting a pattern?

Stacy was with us until Tuesday, when Monica drove her back to the airport. So that about sums up the past couple of weeks. Lots of work, but enough play to keep my batteries charged up.

[tags]novell,summer,hot weather,chicago weather,shedd aquarium,komodo dragon,sea otter,adler planetarium,exchange 5.5[/tags]