Office Clean Up: Fax Line and Spam

For whatever reason, this was a good week to do some clean-up and tech organizing.

First off, my fax line. Way back in 2007, I noted the way my professional need for a dedicated fax line had changed (I was renting space in an office building at the time). Nevertheless, when I set up my New Britain home office in 2009, I opted in for a second landline in the place to be used as a fax line.

Somewhere along the line, I gave up that second line (probably about the time my Comcast TV / Internet / Phone bill started to hit the pain threshold and I bought a digital television), I cut the video cable and probably let go of that second phone line.

Not wanting to lose the cachet of a dedicated fax line, I signed up for a digital fax service, OnlineFaxes to be specific. For $36 bucks a month I get a dedicated, 860 fax number, and 25 free pages per month. I almost never receive any faxes, but I at least have the capability.

Today I *finally* got my in-office tech up to speed - plugged my all-in-one printer / scanner / fax into my voice phone circuit (so I could send a hard-copy fax if I needed to), set up the header to reflect the "new" digital fax number, and programmed the fax machine to pick up "after" my landline goes to voice mail (which is to say, never)

Faxes are all but dead, I know, but it's nice to have the capability.

On the spam front, I spent some time trying to shovel sand against the sea of spam. I've owned my powerlines.com domain since the dawn of the internet, and have been using my primary email address since 2001 or thereabouts. So I get a *lot* of unwanted email. And while a pile of that is clearly spam that is not going to change regardless of my actions, a second pile is stuff that I have deliberately or inadvertently opted-in to over the years. It's not that big a deal on my dedicated computer - I have spam filters, junk filters, folder filters to move stuff around and my in-box is traditionally a dozen or so emails a day. But on my phone or tablet - well, there are 100s of emails every day to scroll through. 

So this week I set out to thin the email herd a little bit. I sorted my SPAM / JUNK folder by sender, and for anything that looked like opt-in email (SPAM comes in 1-2 day waves, opt-in stuff comes pretty consistently) I chose to either accept it (setting a filter to dump it into a semi-organized / useful folder, such as "electrical newsletters" or "consumer" or "musical" for places I do frequent) or to unsubscribe.

It's a huge task (over a decade of not really paying attention) but I think I'm making some inroads. the work continues....

Underwood Typewriter

I gave away my typewriter.

It was an electric model - an Underwood 565 (I think) that my parents gave me for graduation. I say my parents, because sometime between purchasing it and my graduation day, my dad passed away - it was perhaps the last gift he bought for me and a typewriter as a gift has his hand all over it. I had not remembered that fact until sitting down to write this - on a Dell keyboard and an internet blog - and not on my Underwood typewriter. This fact saddens me a little; although it needed to go regardless. When it comes to sentimental remembrances of dad - his St. Christopher medal (which he wore constantly throughout his marriage and adult life) and his bowling ball (a 16-pounder that I have bowled a few rounds with back in the day) will have to do.....

But back to the typewriter. I made my way through high school with an old 1920's vintage Underwood (one of those big cast iron things) that I fed with corrosable onion skin paper (the better to type head-to-paper, as was my wont back in the day). It was a beast - and it survived into my adulthood, sitting in my basement in Waterbury until I decided to discard it (no freecycle or craigslist back then, but I left it on a table at the curb and it found a home before trash day). The electric model went with me to college, where it was sporadically used (not a lot of call for typewriters in engineering school) although I did peck out an Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) on the MA Bottle Deposit Law (fairly new at the time and resonant with my working at a package store), as well as an analysis of the Who's "Tommy" using classical techniques. A handful of treatised on Shakespeare and classical music (in retrospect, I took a lot of non-engineering courses). Also a couple of dozen long winded letters to my buddy Jim out at Univ of Chicago. Think I still have one of those (written out, not typed) floating around here somewhere. I ought to send it to him, for the heck of it. Here's who we were, way back then.....

So, after having moved the typewriter several times (home and office) without removing it from the case, it was time to find a home for it. A lovely young woman and perhaps boyfriend stopped by tonight. I asked if she were a writer and she said no, but "....my favorite poet used an Underwood."

It has a good home and a new life, and will do the things a typewriter was born to do. And I have one less piece of stuff in my life. And the technology, plastic, and metal avoided the landfill.

Yogic unattachment? Getting old and realizing that life will not go on forever? Just getting tired of carrying stuff around? Not sure.....

Detoxing - Office Edition

With the realization that I can do my work with little more than a computer set-up, I have set upon the task of shedding "stuff" from my old office as I bring things into the home office.

Yesterday, that involved 8 boxes of ephemera hauled to the dumpster or recycling bin. Many many catalogs - test equipment, components, standards, logowear, office supplies, etc. Some of these dated back to the mid 90s. Many copies of trip reports and training manuals - I've been in business nearly 15 years and things pile up. Most of this stuff is archived electronically and I have a reasonably good backup scheme; in 15 years I've never had a truly catastrophic or non-recoverable computer crash. Piles of used (but saved for some reason) manila folders. Time to buy a fresh box.....

I brought over two large bookshelves last night along with the few items that escaped the purge - 3.5 shelves out of 10 once formerly full shelves. Good job! I also brought over a rack for storing / filing papers - which I intend to resurrect in the new place (as opposed to filing in piles, my most recent technique)

I still have much work to do. A handful of pots (with long gone plants) and some potting soil. Piles of tools and test equipment. A file cabinet. A desk. A table that has become a flat file. And a closet that houses tax records, test equipment, spare electronics, and yoga mats.

But it will get done by the end of the month....on track for that!