Your emailing privileges have been revoked...

Okay...so I've been sharing with you all of the
interesting phone calls that I get throughout the
course of a day. I regret to report to you that the
"disease" has spread over to the email arena as well.

WARNING: What you are about to read is arguably the most random
account ever recorded in the annals of business
communication.

To place his note in the proper context
(although you'll doubt there is a context after
reading it) I will first allow you to read my note to
him. Truly a masterpiece in brevity...

Hi Everett,
I tried calling both of the numbers that you left in
your email, but neither voicemail picked up. To
expedite this process, I have attached
our non-disclosure agreement to this email for your
review. Please sign and fax back at your convenience.
Also, my contact information is listed below so please
do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or
concerns.
Regards,
Destah

And now, I present to you, in its entirety…randomness
personified.

Dear Destah -
Sorry for the phone problems - we have 4 buildings in
santa clara and 1
in sunnyvale - we were supposed to "go live" with a
new VOIP PBX on monday - it hasn't happened yet and
doesn't appear like it's going to happen this week, so
as a result all lines are ringing on their terminal
blocks with nothing
plugged in to signal us

Brace yourself. This, and the next sentence about the times , are probably the last pieces of relevant information in his email.

I will be at this number generally in the evenings
from 5PM until 9PM if you want to speak in person - it
has an old fashioned wall phone stuck on it with
the little bell ringer (Hey - sometimes technology
just gets in the way and
we long for those simple times when the phone rang,
you KNEW where it was, and it didn't require a -48VDC
loraine rectifier and battery array to run it.)

Whatever that is. I feel like I’m having a conversation with Marvin the Martian, with his Supersonic XL-14 Modulator.

That number is 408-261-2000 - evenings 5-9 pm best
time - once the VOIP PBX
is in you are supposed to be able to ring me on any
number based on your caller ID line number - once you
and I talk the PBX remembers who's callerID goes to
which engineer here and automatically puts them
through without an auto
attendant feature in between where you have to listen
to recordings and dial
extension numbers. Plus it dumps all the out of area
/ private telemarketers into voicemail to preserve our
free time.

Are you sure you don’t want to talk to the Telemarketers? You guys might be cut from the same cloth. On second thought, they might hang up on you.

As for your attachment - I will try to print it - we
use text mode email here running on hewlett-packard
servers using the HPUX operating system - so no
attachments ever show up - the major advantage is no
virusus ever show up
either. It also cuts all the spam crap and lets me
quickly get through my
email when i'm on my inmarsat phone on the back side
of the mountain without downloading everything to read
it (messages stay on the HP server and I can
just read the subject screen).

You don’t say. Mere mortals like me just wait until I return to the front side of the mountain before downloading.

Sometimes I can forward emails with attachments to
another system which is a microsoft PC based system
that handles inline attachments - if that works I'll
fax over your NDA.

Everett Basham

If this guy got me on the phone, I might not ever get
off. Can you imagine an actual face to face meeting? No thanks.