Wow... is it September already?!?

Well I never intended to disappear for months, but I guess no one ever does. No apologizing this time from me. I was just plane swamped from all sides. I know you've all been there and understand so...quick update and rambling ensues....
My test users on Notes 8.0.1 are not happy. Surprise to no one... it's slow at start up and buggy. I'm happily calling an end to the testing and downloading 8.0.2 since it appears to fix the major complaint of slowness at startup. So thank you to IBM for getting that out!! Hopefully, I can report happy users soon. However, to complicate matters I have a concurrent test group on a brand new domain. Yep, management agreed that having a clustered notes environment on brand new servers would be a great idea. In an attempt to take full advantage of the situation, my fellow admin and I, convinced them that this was also a great opportunity to fine tune the environment. #1 on my wish list was getting the old company name out of the hierarchy and fix hierarchy issues that have been haunting our notes environment for years and more importantly having 8 servers so we can get the full functionality of having 8 clients!! So during the big 8 testing we brought in a Binary Tree consultant with CMT for Domains. A very cool little tool that magically is moving users from the old domain and clunky servers over to our pristine new environment. So to truly make life fun, I have another test group running concurrently with users on the new domain/servers. I do have a little bit of overlap between the two groups but for the most part it makes it fun trying to figure out if issues are 8 or the new domain.
To top it all off the wonderful people in way higher positions in the Army National Guard than I decided to make our annual training three weeks instead of two this year. Normally I love every opportunity to go play in the woods and do some good in my state, but with all my projects in full swing it really hurt me this year. There was also a very near miss to spending an extended stay in a certain "sandbox" elsewhere in the world. Thank goodness those wonderful people that interrupted my projects also decided my skills weren't needed for this deployment. Phew! All rambling aside, that would have really hurt from all angles. Life has been hard since Dad's passing. Work is trying to drive me insane. But more importantly to all else, I'm deeply in love and the thought of being parted from him had me close to tears at all times. Luckily all those worries are now behind me for the time being.
Oh, one other cool note that I just remembered... my manager is actually going to send me to training soon!! Who knows, maybe this will propel me to the next level of apprenticeship? Maybe even get to take some exams at Lotusphere?? A girl can dream right!
So, all that said, does that mean I'll be better at blogging now?!? Well, probably not. But it doesn't mean I don't love all you guys that actually do read!!!