I Love Technology
Topic: Technology
The phone rang. We answered it. It was a fax machine. We hung up the phone.

See, we don't have a fax machine. We don't even normally connect a computer to the phone line, unless we have an important fax to send or receive. And we weren't expecting one.

Fax machines are wonderful devices that allow the sending of documents from one place to another, assuming neither place has the wonder that we call "internet" to allow for similar document sending in the form of a graphics file. If you send a fax to a computer, it'll save the document as a graphics file anyway.

The benefits to fax (short for "facsimile," because it sends a facsimile image of the document) had an immediate impact to the business world when the fax machine was first introduced. It allowed deals to be closed much more quickly, because they didn't rely on snail mail or courier to deliver documents from, say, Los Angeles to, say, Minsk. The time saved by this is impossible to fully appreciate unless you go back to the old way.

Nowadays, with email, documents are shared even more quickly. Fax machines are actually out-dated and less effective now. Within my lifetime, I have seen the invention, implementation, and decline of the fax machine. It is now obsolete; not to say archaic.

So this ancient technology called my house and wanted to talk to ancient technology that I don't have; that is to say, I have an emulation of it, but I don't keep it connected to the telephone line. That's where my phone is. As I said, we hung up the phone.

And, later, it called again. We hung up again.

And, later, it called again. We hung up again, more annoyed than the previous time.

And, later, when the phone rang again, we let the answering machine get it. Answering machines are another marvelous invention, allowing telemarketers to sell at you even when you're ignoring them. We figured that when the person attempting to send the fax connected to an answering machine, they would stop trying. No such luck; the fax machine kept trying.

Finally, I dialed the ever-popular *69, and obtained the telephone number. My daughter plugged the number into Google, and got the business name, and a phone number for their voice line. We then called the voice line and told them to cut it out. They agreed, and we only received one more attempt.

The woman that answered was apologetic. "It must be my boss. He doesn't know how to use a fax machine."

I kind'a figured as much.