Here's your sign

[hatch17]

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where in the midst of conversation it is overwhelmingly evident that the intelligence level is not even remotely equal between you and the unfortunate soul to whom you are talking? I am not talking about a conversation between you as an adult and a child, but between two seemingly adults. Well, I thought I would share such an experience with my fellow Tinboaters.

I was attempting to fax requested paperwork to someone at a very well-respected university here in Alabama with no luck. (Now, I will leave the university’s identity nameless so as not to embarrass any alum that may be in our midst.) Anyway, after 3 or 4 attempts over a couple of hours, I called the office at the university to check the fax number. Here is the conversation that followed:

Me: "Yes, I’ve been trying to send you a fax, but there seems to be a problem with the number I wrote down.” (Now, I was fully willing to take the blame for this taking far too long to send a two-page fax, so I gave her the number I had written down expecting a correction.)
Lady: “Well, that number is right, let me check the machine.” (After a few brief moments…) “Everything seems to be fine. The machine isn’t busy, and I didn’t hear anything coming through. So try it again.”
Me: “Okay, can I leave you on hold and try again?”
Lady: ”Sure.” So, I quickly tried again with the same result.
Me: “It still isn’t gong through.”
Lady: “Well, let me give you another fax number here in the office.” (She gave me another number and as you guessed it… still no such luck.)
Me: “Well, maybe you can call someone to come and look at your fax machine and when it is working again you can call me.”
Lady: “Okay, I will. But, maybe I’ll have to wait to let somebody know when the lights come back on.” Now I think the next words out of her mouth were, “Do you think that’s it?” It was hard to make out exactly what she said when the phone fell to the desk and then hit my shoe.
Me: “I’m sure that’s the reason, why don’t you call me when the lights come back on.” Being the mean person that I really am, I wasn’t referring to those lights.

I hope you guys had a good day!

 

[Captain Ahab]

I am not a bit surprise - fax machines seem to amaze people.

i spent a god part of the morning with a client's mother - she kept insisting that my fax machine was rejecting the fax! (It cannot reject anything - the dumb *** sender's machine was jammed)

 

[Waterwings]

:lol: Those are both funny!

Now, yesterday, I tried 3 times to send a fax. It wouldn't transmit at all. I then realized what was causing the problem: I was in the Guidance Office using their machine, and everytime I'd push the Send button I would start talking to my wife (yep, she works at the school also). While I was talking I wasn't paying attention to the fax machine "voice" message telling me that I didn't need to dial a 1 or the area code for a local number. But I tried it 3 diffent times! ](*,)

 

[DocWatson]

Hasn't anyone ever heard of email ??? I've never understood why most of the business world still insists on using Fax for sending documents around that there is really no need for the security of the Fax system.

 

[Waterwings]

Unforunately there are two small businesses that I deal with. One is a local charter bus company, and he only uses phone calls and faxes. The other is a fellow that has a small trophy business, and he only uses phone calls and regular mail. It does keep the costs down on the purchases, but is a PITA.

 

[Captain Ahab]

Hasn't anyone ever heard of email ??? I've never understood why most of the business world still insists on using Fax for sending documents around that there is really no need for the security of the Fax system.

It can be a PITA to scan lengthy documents and then attach them to emails. heck, I still do not even own a scanner

 

[DocWatson]

Hasn't anyone ever heard of email ??? I've never understood why most of the business world still insists on using Fax for sending documents around that there is really no need for the security of the Fax system.

It can be a PITA to scan lengthy documents and then attach them to emails. heck, I still do not even own a scanner

But at least with scanning and attaching the recipient gets a copy they can read rather than some black & white thing that has to be deciphered and can't be read. And isn't the purpose of sending someone a copy of a document that they be able to read it ??

 

[Popeye]

When we were buying our house in Texas and I was sending Power of Attorney paperwork to my wife we had to use a fax. Something about a scanned and emailed document could be altered by the recipient. Could be a Texas thing though, I’m not sure.

 

[Captain Ahab]

When we were buying our house in Texas and I was sending Power of Attorney paperwork to my wife we had to use a fax. Something about a scanned and emailed document could be altered by the recipient. Could be a Texas thing though, I’m not sure.

Not just a Texas thing - anyone can change a scanned document so fax is still the way to go for exchanging paper over the phone wires


Plus - when you scan and then email a document the person on the other end has to have the proper settings to print out the same document. I get emailed documents all the time in mystery formats that I cannot use.

 

[DocWatson]

When we were buying our house in Texas and I was sending Power of Attorney paperwork to my wife we had to use a fax. Something about a scanned and emailed document could be altered by the recipient. Could be a Texas thing though, I’m not sure.

Not just a Texas thing - anyone can change a scanned document so fax is still the way to go for exchanging paper over the phone wires


Plus - when you scan and then email a document the person on the other end has to have the proper settings to print out the same document. I get emailed documents all the time in mystery formats that I cannot use.

The Captain is correct that it's a security issue and fax is the more secure option. But for everyday document transfers that don't require that level of security email is a better option IMHO.

As far as the format issue goes, that is more a , matter of the differences between formats that the different word processing softwares use. Microsoft Office recently changed the format it's programs save documents to and it is not backward compatable. So if you have MS Office 2003 you cannot open a document created in MS Office 2007 unless the person who creates the document saves it to .doc format your version works with rather than their default .docx format, you won't be able to open it. Same problems occurred between earlier MS Office programs and the the old standard, Word Perfect. They have to keep you buying updated version somehow and this seems to be the way they do it.

 

[Captain Ahab]

That is my ***** Doc (not.doc)

I run into this all the time b/c I do not run the latest version of word - it sucks

 

[LegBrkr]

Sounds like Doc Watson needs a better fax machine. We get great copies off of our fax machine. You can't get signatures on emails. Not that you can verify the signature you have on a fax, but it's still a signature when one is needed.

 

[Popeye]

That is my ***** Doc (not.doc)

I run into this all the time b/c I do not run the latest version of word - it sucks

Me thinks it's time to upgrade Cap't.