Chronicles of a Simple Geek

You are here, and it’s not good enough.

Chris — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:57:29 +0000

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The One where I demand Voice mail and Fax machines die

Chris — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:55:01 +0000

Say it with me.. Fax Machines and voice mail need to die. I’m not the first to say it, I won’t be the last, but this really needs to happen like, now.

At my current work place we use scanners and email for a majority of our document needs. Unfortunately we still have to deal with two nessesary evils.

Fax Machines

We used a service that emailed our faxes to us for some time, but upper management decided to let that lapse. So we are slowly going back to dealing with some faxes, which is just plain stupid. Fortunately efax provides a free incoming fax number, if you can find it. Here I did all the work for you. For the FREE efax form: https://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/signupFree the free service uses a dumb fucking proprietary format, but if you need it to be free, there it is.

The fax machine was more or less invented in 1846, with some great strieds in between with the breakthrough of the… wait for it… 14.4 baud modem!

As you can see below, not much has changed in 20 years, fax machines still use telephone lines, have to be available at the same time, and have a noise free connection.

The email, has better error correction, emails are pretty resilient pdf’s or whatever you like to use will most certainly look better than a fax..

ITU Standard	Released Date	Data Rates (bit/s)	Modulation Method
V.27	1988	4800, 2400	PSK
V.29	1988	9600, 7200, 4800	QAM
V.17	1991	14400, 12000, 9600, 7200	TCM
V.34	1994	28800	QAM
V.34bis	1998	33600	QAM

Source – Wikipedia

Voice mail

In 1935 Benjamin Thornton invented the answering machine, privately he later admitted that Satan made him do it. Around the 1970′s tapes weren’t big enough and phones not quite annoying enough, the devil struck again with voice mail.

I HATE voicemail, it’s a passion of mine. People leave me vague voice mails, talk for 5 mins leaving little or no information and when they get to their call back number, say it so fucking fast that I must listen to their damned message two or three times to get all of it. if they had only sent me an email, I wouldn’t have this problem, better yet they had sent me an email, I could forward it to the correct co worker, they should have left a voice mail for in the first place.

To combat voice mail, I use Google voice, actually I’ve been using it since it was Grandcentral, before Google bought them out. I’m still trying to figure out how to get my work voice mail to forward to my Google voice account. It’s not happing yet… Until then.. Email me at cpuangel dot com

Here comes bonnie

Chris — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:47:23 +0000

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USPS cares

Chris — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:58:32 +0000

Netflix and the post office must be in bed together more than I originally thought, because netflix knew this happened before I could even report it to them. Remember the united states postal service cars, but you still aren’t getting your letter or package….

Things I found Interesting – Week ending in 7/22/2010

Chris — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:04 +0000

Sign Of The Times of the Day: Does this mean I’ll finally…

7/19/2010

Web designer claims 84% ownership of Facebook

7/14/2010

Toyota Sudden Acceleration is Driver Error

7/14/2010

RIAA in the red on piracy lawsuits

7/17/2010

Things I found Interesting – Week ending in 7/21/2010

Chris — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:00:05 +0000

Sign Of The Times of the Day: Does this mean I’ll finally…

7/19/2010

Web designer claims 84% ownership of Facebook

7/14/2010

Toyota Sudden Acceleration is Driver Error

7/14/2010

RIAA in the red on piracy lawsuits

7/17/2010

WTF Armitron?

Chris — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:28:07 +0000

So I’ve had this Armitron wrist watch for a few years now. I wear this watch everywhere, pool, ocean, work, everywhere. Okay, so I take it off at night and during showers, I’m not a retard. I like watches that don’t give a shit about water and this watch isn’t bothered. Until last week on vacation, when we hit the beach or boat every day. Then I looked down and noticed it was missing one of the little nubby bolt looking things that attach the band to the watch face, I figured I could find these online, no dice.

I just checked Armitron’s website, and they have a phone number for parts I might have to try, no email, twitter or anything. Comcast cares, you spoil me apparently, because I might have to use the…… PHONE….to call someone… Internet fail.