I was 17 in 1986 when the Boston Red Sox lost to my beloved New York Mets, thanks in part to an errant ball through the wickets of Bill Buckner. I didn’t know much about “The Curse of the Bambino” at the time, I was just thrilled that my team had won its first World Series in those 17 years. Who cared about a 75 year old curse?

My Mets haven’t won a World Series since that ‘86 Series. I moved to San Francisco, some seven years ago, and I’ve become a Giants fan, and they haven’t won a World Series I since I moved here (OK, OK, they haven’t won since they moved here either, some fifty-eight years ago.)

Yet these extended streaks are nothing compared to the what Boston fans have had to endure. Since 1918 they haven’t won a World Series.

Until tonight.

Tonight, the Boston Red Sox are champions of the world, eighty-six years since their last championship. Their long-suffering fans can rejoice tonight (and tomorrow night, and the night after that…).

The team was three outs away from elimination in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees. They came back from a three games to none deficient to take the next four games from New York, a feat that had never been done ever in the history of baseball.

And then they faced a St. Louis Cardinals team that was just overmatched and overwhelmed, and beat them four straight.

Never has any team ever won eight games in a row in the post season.

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox. You played a great pair of series, and you deserve to be Champions.

I lived in New York for over 18 years. In that time, I never needed a car, never even had a license. (This will make perfect sense for anyone who lived in New York, and be a completely foreign concept to just about every one else in the world.)

Just about seven years ago I moved out to San Francisco. For the first five years I managed without a car. Difficult? Sure, but I become very familiar with the San Francisco transit system.

Things started becoming a tad more problematic when I got my current job at Apple. Getting to work was a two-hour walk-train-train-shuttle affair, only to be reversed at the end of every day.

Three months of it, and I’d had enough. After much hang-wringing, I came to a drastic conclusion: I had to move from San Francisco to the Peninsula. It was a soul-wrenching, but ultimately necessary move which eliminated one train, cut an hour from my commute and unfortunately distanced me from my friends.

It wasn’t all terrible: I could still take Cal-Train north on weekends for softball, or a Giants game or hanging with friends who would pick me up, and I was still very familiar with San Francisco’s transit system.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Cal-Train stopped running on weekends.

Suddenly, what had passed for a social life was in danger of being destroyed utterly. With no way of getting to San Francisco on the weekend, I was stuck. Once again I had to do something desperate, and this time, it meant getting a license.

Buying a car was a typical Jasonian task: research research research, then make a decision based on intuition and feel. I ended up with a 2003 Nissan Altima SE, and it’s been fabulous. I only wish I had made the decision to buy a car a long time ago.

Except for one tiny little thing.

Cars are expensive to drive.

I don’t mean the cost of gas, or of regular oil changes (even though both are absurdly expensive).

No. I mean the regular maintenance costs.

Today I took my Altima in for its 30,000 mile “major service” (thirty thousand miles in just under two years: not extreme, but more than I thought I’d drive). I figured it wouldn’t be cheap, but I wasn’t expecting it to be $500.

Yep, five hundred dollars. That came as a bit of a shocker.

I often wonder if the whole “get it checked regularly” isn’t just one big car industry scam, meant to make them all rich.

Now I’m thinking, they better find a whole lot of things wrong with this car, fix it, and make it like new again.

I’m starting to wonder what my car actually costs me. How much money have I spent since I owned it (forget about the cost of purchasing it in the first place). With gas, insurance, car washes, maintenance, and who-knows-what else… gah. I’m starting to plotz just thinking about it.

What could I have done with all that extra money? I could be that much closer to owning a house.

Of course, I wouldn’t be able to leave it, ’cause I wouldn’t have a car….

I’m reading TidBITS, as I do every week, and they mention the desire to have their Take Control series of electronic books get a wider audience. Adam Engst (the publisher) mentioned that there are some 750,000 Macs sold per quarter, with perhaps 50% of those Macs to first-time Mac users.

He also wondered how Take Control might be effectively marketed to those 50%, and my immediate thought was “ship ‘em with every Mac. Duh.”

Further consideration led to me consider the fact that Apple has what might be generously considered a skeleton instructional products group, with very little in the way of manuals. If Apple can’t or won’t create those manuals, why not allow someone who wants to do it take control (as it were)?

The fact is, there is already a huge cottage industry around the distinct lack of Apple-generated learning material (if I recall correctly, David Pogue’s The Missing Manual series is something of an all-time best-seller). The problem is people have to go out of their way to buy a third-party manual.

What if Apple shipped a copy of Take Control of Panther with every Mac? Perhaps throw in Take Control of Email With Apple Mail. Maybe even a digital coupon for a free or discounted ebook of the new Mac owner’s choice.

It would be cheaper for Apple than paying a staff of writers, editors and designers; and TidBITS will sell tens of thousands of copies of their ebooks, giving them a huge advance of cash to then create better ebooks. A win-win for everyone.

Jon Stewart on 60 Minutes. Without question, Stewart is the best journalist on television today. As everyone and their aunt know, his appearance on Crossfire is destined to become a classic of television history, and is on its way to being one of the most downloaded clips on the internet (more than Crossfire’s normal audience, in fact).

(Haven’t seen it? Seriously? Try iFilm. You won’t be disappointed. Well, unless you believe the media’s doing a bang-up job or think Fox News is unbiased.)

Is there any chance Stewart’s pokes at the media will have any effect? Cause The Fourth Estate to gaze inward for a moment, recognize that they’re puppets, and begin reporting, not retelling?

I’m sure Stewart would have a witty comeback for that suggestion.