I’m alternating between laughing and crying, trying to deal with this Exchange 5.5 Server we have here at work. Maybe somebody else has seen this problem. In Outlook, you can see all the regular folders: Inbox, Journal, Drafts, Outbox, Sent Items, and so on. Some of them have a bunch of items, some have none. In Outlook, you can also bring up the properties and look at the Folder Size, which shows you how many total kilobytes all the items are taking up. If you delete all the items, that number drops to zero. Fair enough. This is the way the world is supposed to work.

That is not what’s happening with my server, though. On certain mailboxes, if I delete all the items out of a folder, and bring up the Folder Size listing, it still shows the folder having some weight. The Inbox has zero items, but a size of 2,600kb. Drafts has zero items, but a size of 8,800kb. This is not right. This is not supposed to be happening. This is like apples falling up. Where is this coming from? What kind of “hidden” items are taking up all this space? Why is this happening to me?

I need to go home and lie down.

We got The Call last night. The Call we’ve gotten so many times before. The Call that always gets our hopes up, only to repeatedly see them dashed again. It’s gotten to where we don’t trust The Call anymore, and in fact we feel a sense of dread mixed in with the joy whenever it happens. We’d like nothing more than to never get The Call again, but we are constantly being put into the situation, and so we have to sit, anticipating The Call, hoping the phone will ring. Then, finally, it does ring, we rush over to the phone, answer it, and hear those bittersweet words.

“This is the Capitol Ford service department, and your car is ready.”

Our car has been having transmission problems. And not just the kind where you take it in for a few hours and they have to tighten a cable. This is the kind of problem where they replace the torque converter, and the problem comes back. They replace the transmission, because there are metal shavings in the fluid, and the problem comes back. They fiddle with the EGR valve, and it comes back. They adjust the solenoids, and it comes back. This is the kind of problem where you get to know the service guys at the Ford dealership very well, just because you’re in there every week. And they don’t keep the car for just a day. They keep it for a week. Or two weeks. Sometimes the warranty covers the repair, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they’ll pay for a rental car, sometimes they won’t. But each time we get The Call, saying it’s ready, everything is fixed, the car is running fine, and we can come pick it up. And each time, within twenty-four hours, the problem comes back. It’s a really sad routine we’ve gotten into. And it shows no hint of stopping. I can imagine that one day we’ll be too weak to continue, and our grandson will have to pick up the legacy and take the car in for us.

So, last night we got The Call, and apparently everything is fixed. Well, we’ll just have to see about that.