Just the fax, ma'am?
Feb. 22nd, 2009 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
- Carl Sagan
Dear Readers: I apologize for being so delinquent in my communication here. I sort-of promised that I would continue writing here sort-of weekly, and instead I have written here sort-of weakly.
The fact is that J. and I have, for the last several weeks, been neck-deep in negotiations to buy a home. Much of my waking time has lately been spent on realtors, agents, lenders, insurers, appraisers and other people with vague, imposing or disconcerting titles like "home service specialist" -- talking to them on the phone, trying to get them on the phone and worrying about not being able to get them on the phone.
The actual content of these conversations has been largely encouraging -- aside from the mere concept of spending, even in the abstract, what feels like the GDP of a small African nation -- we seemed to have timed the real estate and mortgage markets perfectly to get a good price (relative to the D.C. market) and a good rate.
But the process has its complications, and as the last one of my friends to join the home ownership revolution, I can't understand why I never heard anyone complain about it. I feel like I must be the most soft-shelled, unprepared and intemperate person to ever sign his name on a purchase agreement. I am stressed out to my limit, from my eyebrows to my toenails, and I don't ever remember anyone else whining like I am.
Chief among my frustrations is the real estate industrial complex's total reliance on the fax machine. The business infrastructure of these lending and title companies apparently dates back to the late 1980s, because they all need documents faxed to them. And we're not talking about one or two pages, either; I mean extensive, 30 or 40 page lawyerly documents, on legal-size paper.
To my knowledge, manufacturers stopped making fax machines before they even evolved to the point where they could handle such business tasks. These days, nobody owns their own personal fax machine, down from the 0.05 percent of the population that ever did (including my father, back in the day, when the digital facsimile images were manually punched by a pterodactyl). So of course it must be expected that people will either pay $10 a page to use a hotel business center or surreptitiously commandeer their office's fax machine during coffee breaks. My office's fax machine must have been a top-of-the-line piece of corporate weaponry back in 1993, but clearly has unresolved anxiety issues at any job involving more than a half-dozen clearly typewritten leaves.
Apparently, not everyone has entered the e-mail and attachment environment in which fully evolved people like you and I exist. Of course, there are translational "desktop fax services" out there, where such technologically enterprising people can scan their documents (if they're not already electronically encoded) and fax them to our neanderthal brethren via computer. But a casual audit of these services suggests that they cost $60+ on an annual basis, a steep price for temporary convenience.
I am more inclined to simply FedEx the damned papers and hope that the recipients get paper cuts.
- Carl Sagan
Dear Readers: I apologize for being so delinquent in my communication here. I sort-of promised that I would continue writing here sort-of weekly, and instead I have written here sort-of weakly.
The fact is that J. and I have, for the last several weeks, been neck-deep in negotiations to buy a home. Much of my waking time has lately been spent on realtors, agents, lenders, insurers, appraisers and other people with vague, imposing or disconcerting titles like "home service specialist" -- talking to them on the phone, trying to get them on the phone and worrying about not being able to get them on the phone.
The actual content of these conversations has been largely encouraging -- aside from the mere concept of spending, even in the abstract, what feels like the GDP of a small African nation -- we seemed to have timed the real estate and mortgage markets perfectly to get a good price (relative to the D.C. market) and a good rate.
But the process has its complications, and as the last one of my friends to join the home ownership revolution, I can't understand why I never heard anyone complain about it. I feel like I must be the most soft-shelled, unprepared and intemperate person to ever sign his name on a purchase agreement. I am stressed out to my limit, from my eyebrows to my toenails, and I don't ever remember anyone else whining like I am.
Chief among my frustrations is the real estate industrial complex's total reliance on the fax machine. The business infrastructure of these lending and title companies apparently dates back to the late 1980s, because they all need documents faxed to them. And we're not talking about one or two pages, either; I mean extensive, 30 or 40 page lawyerly documents, on legal-size paper.
To my knowledge, manufacturers stopped making fax machines before they even evolved to the point where they could handle such business tasks. These days, nobody owns their own personal fax machine, down from the 0.05 percent of the population that ever did (including my father, back in the day, when the digital facsimile images were manually punched by a pterodactyl). So of course it must be expected that people will either pay $10 a page to use a hotel business center or surreptitiously commandeer their office's fax machine during coffee breaks. My office's fax machine must have been a top-of-the-line piece of corporate weaponry back in 1993, but clearly has unresolved anxiety issues at any job involving more than a half-dozen clearly typewritten leaves.
Apparently, not everyone has entered the e-mail and attachment environment in which fully evolved people like you and I exist. Of course, there are translational "desktop fax services" out there, where such technologically enterprising people can scan their documents (if they're not already electronically encoded) and fax them to our neanderthal brethren via computer. But a casual audit of these services suggests that they cost $60+ on an annual basis, a steep price for temporary convenience.
I am more inclined to simply FedEx the damned papers and hope that the recipients get paper cuts.
