I’m pretty much known as a technophile around the office, evidenced by my near-euphoria over Apple’s announcement of its latest gadget, the iPad. (I must have one. Now.) My staffers come to me with tech issues before calling the IT department, because 9 times out of 10, I can fix whatever ails their computers (and 9.5 times out of 10, the answer is “restart it.”).

Surprising, then, that I’d never used our office fax machine until this week. Granted, it was brand new to us over the summer, and I used the previous one often enough to know my way around, but I hadn’t had occasion to use this new and improved model in the last six months.

Why would such a self-proclaimed geek not know how to use a fax machine, you ask? BECAUSE IT’S TWO THOUSAND TEN!

That’s right, folks, much like scarcely anyone remembers how to change the ribbon on a typewriter, it’s because the technology is hopelessly outdated. In the world of e-mail, scanners and PDFs, there’s really no reason to make paper copies and transmit them over phone lines in the year 2010.

Unless, of course, you’re the State of New York. Late last week, I received an e-mail from the New York State Assembly Minority Conference, asking for permission to link from their website to ours, for a column Melissa Stagnaro had written back in December. Pretty much anytime anyone wants to link to our website, it’s a no-brainer for me to say yes. Provided they ask, which is always nice. But we usually don’t stand on formality too much here at The Evening Sun. Most times, a simple “go for it” is a good enough agreement for me.

Not so, and not surprisingly, for the State of New York. It wasn’t enough for me to say OK about this link. Instead, they required that I download a release form, fill it out, sign it, and FAX it back. That’s a few too many steps for me given all that I have to do in a day, but I agreed (plus it made Melissa pretty happy to have her work referenced on a state website) and got it done.