Let me tell you how I hate technology today

So it’s 2-thousand-freaking-9 right?

So I have to fill out a position description / banding form for the University. As a nice change from the last time I did this a few years back, it’s a “form fillable” PDF file. (or whatever the term is, it’s not like I do much desktop stuff anymore.). Instead of a word doc, thank goodness.

I’m thinking “sweet”. I know at one time, form-fillable PDF’s couldn’t be saved with the text in them from Preview on the Macintosh, but I know they can now. Awesome.

So I crank up Preview, fill my text in, and get to a signature line. Doh! The last thing I want to do is print it out, sign it, scan it, convert back to PDF. Sigh. I can just scan my signature, I need that anyway. Put the scanned image into Preview right?

Wrong.

Well, I own a copy of the CS3 suite, so I have a somewhat backdated version of Acrobat, but I figure “hey, I’ll open that filled in PDF in Acrobat, and just paste my signature in. I bet Acrobat will allow it”

And yes, Acrobat does. Cool.

Only, all… my…. text…. is…. gone. Damnit!

But no it’s not, if I click in the field — it’s there! WHAT?!?

Sigh. So I saved it with the image, opened in preview, text was there, emailed it to my colleague, text wasn’t there. SIGH. I then opened in Preview, “Printed to PDF” to get something that can be sent back over.

In retrospect, I should have just faxed it to myself, signed it, scanned it, and faxed it back to myself. The RIAA’s aversion to digital media and workflow has NOTHING on the enterprise apps from Adobe, et. al.

Absurd.