[Flex] WHOI having Fastlane troubles

[Sheila Clifford]

Dear Mr. Slater -

I received your name from Maureen Carragher, an Admin Pro in our 
Physical Oceanography Department here at WHOI.  She described troubles 
that many of us here have just begun to experience with Fastlane, 
specifically, our computers are seizing up when we try to "print entire 
proposal".  You suggested that perhaps we were having trouble because of 
Acrobat patches that we had installed.  Respectfully, I'm doubtful of 
that.  This is a problem that is hitting us across the Institution, even 
on machines that are running pure, un-patched Acrobat 5, and maybe even 
Acrobat 4 - machines that have experienced no problems in the past.  We 
all have the Acrobat application installed locally on our machines - it 
is not as though we are working with something installed on a network 
that may have been patched.  We're talking roughly 20+ people and 
machines - and we all certainly haven't had patches installed in the 
last week or so.

Therefore, I think we need to look elsewhere for the problem - and we 
feel we have a BIG problem considering the impending Feb 15 deadline.  I 
would guess that WHOI will be submitting roughly 100+ proposals by Feb 
15.  It looks to me as though NSF has re-vamped its webpages.  They look 
wonderful - but might there be something new - and conflicting - there?  
Is there a Windows update (rather than an Acrobat patch) that could be 
causing a problem?  It is conceivable that people here have updated 
their Windows program (while it isn't really conceivable that we all 
installed Acrobat patches).

Another piece of info is that Maureen uploaded a PDF file to the 
Fastlane system that was created according to the long-standing Fastlane 
specifications (compatible with Acrobat 3), but the processed PDF file 
that Fastlane presented back to her was an Acrobat 4 file.  This puzzles 
us, because we thought that Fastlane could not handle anything past 
Acrobat 3.

Please don't perceive the tone of my email as at all accusatory or 
hostile.  We appreciate your efforts to help us resolve this problem.  
However, I do believe that we have a problem and we are getting very 
nervous.

I have cc'd Brian Midson on this message.  He visited us here at WHOI 
and might be able to provide some assistance with this issue.

Many thanks!
Sheila Clifford
Admin Pro, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry
WHOI