Ying was over the other night, and as we flipped the stations looking for something to watch, we came across Deal or No Deal. I’ve watched it a few times before; it’s an interesting game of chance driven by greed, and injected with hot, well-dressed models with money-filled suitcases.

At some point, I asked Ying what she thinks the the models get paid for standing there, opening cases and looking pretty.

Now, before I go on, I must admit: I generally think of my girlfriend as a bit of an innocent. You know, someone who rarely rocks the boat, is generally nice to people, seldom says anything sarcastic. Basically, the opposite of me.

So I was a left rather speechless by her reply:

I don’t know. Would it be enough to pay for their breast implants?

Boggle.

Clearly I’m having an effect on my girlfriend. The question is, is this a positive or negative influence….

As I mentioned on Saturday, Ying and I went to see The Rivals, a laugh-out-loud comedy you may not be familiar with, but which has probably influenced you. It’s the play by Richard Sheridan that introduced Mrs. Malaprop, the woman who constantly used the wrong words, to hilarious effect.

For example, “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” instead of “alligator” or “He is the very pineapple of politeness!” rather than “pinnacle”. It was a fun play, and Ying and I chuckled often. The play is in the public domain, so you can read it for free online.

René Augesen, one of A.C.T.’s core actors gets better and better in every play I see her in and was delightful here as Lydia Languish. Her fellow core actor Gregory Wallace (as Faulkland), while an actor with great stage presence, seems to be doing the same character in each of the roles I’ve seen of him. I was also impressed by both Anthony Fusco as Jack Absolute and Charles Dean as Sir Anthony Absolute. Fusco, in particular was very good, and he and Augesen played well opposite each other.

Seeing shows like The Rivals reminds me of why I enjoy having this subscription. While I was familiar with the character of Mrs. Malaprop in a very general sense, I was unaware of the play itself, and would likely have passed on purchasing tickets specifically for it.

It’s likely I will renew first thing on Monday, for two reasons: there’s a deadline to guarantee my current seats, and I identified three plays from the 2006-2007 season I’d want to see:

1. Travesties, because it’s by Tom Stoppard
2. Hedda Gabler, because it’s by Henrik Ibsen
3. The Imaginary Invalid, because it’s by Moliere and stars René Auberjonois

I figure if I’d want to see half the plays, and would enjoy one or two others if I saw them, well then I might as well go all the way in. More as it develops.

I have an A.C.T. (American Conservatory Theatre) subscription which allows me to see the seven plays A.C.T. puts on each year. Today’s play is “The Rivals“. Perhaps I’ll give a report on it upon my return.

I’ve been a subscriber for two or three years, and I’m debating if I should renew for 2006-2007. The tickets aren’t cheap, especially weekend series I have. However, it’s a good excuse to get into the city on a scheduled basis, and to see performances I might not pay to see individually.

The other question is, can I find another theatre subscription series I’d enjoy, and which is either less expensive or improved in some way? Maybe I’ll do some research on that.

After several years of talk and no action, the New York Mets organization announced recently that they’ll be building a new ballpark for the team.

Tentatively named “Mets Ballpark”, instead of the one-size-fits-all symmetrical stadium meant to host rock stars as well as sports stars, the new field is more intimate (only about 45,000 fans instead of the 55,000-60,000 fans Shea can hold), and has asymmetrical sizing, more befitting a “classic” park, like Brooklyn’s Ebbet’s Field and several of the “new classic” parks like San Diego’s Petco Park. Here’s a comparison of the dimensions for Shea Stadium and Mets Ballpark:

Of interest is the short right-field porch: the eight foot difference will be an overhang that sticks out into the field. That should be fun. Kind of like Pac Bell.. I mean SBC… I mean AT&T Park’s right field. (Yes, I’m bitter. And we can expect more of the same with Mets Ballpark, since they’re looking to sell corporate naming rights.)

The Mets have a website describing the park, with a 3D tour and a video of the unveiling.

The new ballpark will be built in the parking lot of Shea, and Shea will be torn down. That will be a sad day for New Yorkers, definitely a sad day for me. If I find out the schedule, perhaps I’ll find myself there on the day they take it down.

I’ve decided that there very much needs to be an Undercover Brother Meets Austin Powers movie.

And soon.

If I had written an entry with this headline on April 1, everyone would have assumed it was a big ol’ joke for the geekerati. I may have even had people call me nuts for even suggesting such a thing. But no, it’s not a joke, it is in fact exactly what Apple has gone and done: new software from my favorite company will allow you to run Windows XP™ on an Intel-based Mac, like the diminutive Mac mini. The software is named Boot Camp and is available as a public beta.

Of course, as Apple notes on the Boot Camp website:

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

And never let it be said that Apple doesn’t enjoy taking a good swipe at long-time partner Microsoft. The Boot Camp website also snarks:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Man, you have to love Apple.

Back in college, everyone drank way too much alcohol, leading to the inevitable purging in front of the porcelain god. When it was bad enough that we couldn’t make it into work that day, we used the standard excuse: “I had some kind of stomach flu”. This was code for “I had way too much to drink last night, and I am still paying for it” and everyone knew it.

Had any of us experienced the real “stomach flu”, we might not have been so cavalier in throwing the phrase around. This week, I had the dubious pleasure of catching the real “stomach flu”, and after spending four-plus hours in the Emergency Room flat on my back with an I.V. sticking out of my arm, I’ve gained a whole new level of respect for this “stomach flu”.

In fact, “stomach flu” doesn’t really begin to explain the extent to which this nasty bug can wreck havoc on your system. When even plain water gets forcefully expelled, and the yellowish bile that is your stomach acid is all that’s coming out and you’re still trying to vomit up more, you need stronger language, scientific language, language with lots of syllables. Gastroenteritis is the right language here. What did gastroenteritis feel like? Kind of like Mother Nature had grabbed me by the balls, flipped me upside down, and shook me until I’d released all the contents of my stomach, shook me some more until vital bodily fluids had likewise been expelled, and then kept shaking me, simply because, apparently, she liked the sound I made.

It all began Monday night. Since my girlfriend’s plane was delayed a day, I picked her up on Monday afternoon instead of Sunday evening, and we grabbed an early dinner at an Indian restaurant a few blocks from her house. Immediately after I finished eating, I felt a knot in the top of my stomach, just below the breastbone. I knew something was wrong, but it felt like I’d just eaten too much, or too fast. I figured I’d be spending too much time in the toilet that night.

We got home, and the feeling didn’t get any worse, but it didn’t go away either. We went through our activities, finally going to sleep about midnight. I awoke about 3AM with a desperate urge to evacuate my bowels, and then, a few minutes later, started to vomit.

I still had no idea what I was in for.

I spent all of Tuesday vomiting. Everything I tried to eat or drink eventually found its way back up, including Pepto Bismol and plain water. It had gotten so bad that even with nothing on my stomach, I was vomiting, meaning I was bringing up stomach bile.

As you might imagine, that’s neither a pretty sight nor a good thing for your body to be doing.

About 9PM I started thinking that I might want to go to the E.R. since I wasn’t keeping food or liquid down, and my body would start dehydrating. About 10PM I called my health insurance’s nurse hotline, described my symptoms and answered a bunch of questions, and was told “based on what you’ve told me, you should go to an emergency room”.

In all honestly, that’s not what I was expecting to hear.

So about 10:30PM, Ying drove me to the E.R. which is conveniently located about five minutes from my house. A 30 minute wait and I was in to see a doctor. A few forms, and the charging of my co-pay (nothing happened until they had my credit card in hand…) and suddenly I was getting poked in my arm and hooked into an I.V. drip.

They say there’s a first time for everything, and this was one of those times. Never had I been connected to an I.V. drip, and never did I think it would happen. I associate that with sick people, and I just don’t get that kind of sick.

When it was all over, I’d had three liters of fluid pumped into me (the body gets chilled when this is happening, since the fluid is not warmed), had my blood drawn for testing, and received a third needle in my rear to calm the nausea I was feeling. And, at 3:30AM  I walked out of the E.R., with a couple of prescriptions to fill. (Ying found a 24 hour Walgreens to fill the prescription.)

I returned home, took the prescription, and passed out in bed. I awoke several hours later, and Ying, who was an angel of mercy during this, went out and grabbed the few staples I was allowed to eat, including bread and apple juice. I lived on this diet for another day, and by the end of the third day I finally felt like I was at about 90%.

(Ying really was great throughout this, by-the-way. She stayed with me the first day, took me to the E.R., spent the next day with me, did some grocery shopping and even managed to do some cleaning around the house. I’m very lucky to have her.)

By Friday I was eating normal food (though very cautiously), and Saturday night I had my first large meal in almost a week. I’m still not back to “normal”, however, as I still cringe at the slightest stomach rumble or twinge. It’ll take a while before eating isn’t given a second thought.

On my way home today I noticed a van engulfed in white smoke. My first thought, of course, photo-op! Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I sped home, grabbed my camera bag and dashed off to take a few shots. By the time I got back, whatever fire there was was put out, and the van was soaked with foam and water. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I took a few shots of what was left (and of the firefighters):

While shooting, I encountered an error with my Canon 10D. Several times, the camera locked up, with none of the buttons or controls working, and the top LCD displaying “Error 99”. I was able to resolve it by removing and reattaching the lens, but I ended up losing several shots.

Searches for “Canon 10D Error 99” on Google showed that several others were seeing this problem, and some tracked it back to Sigma lenses (I own one) and others to deleting photos in-camera (which I’d done while shooting). I’ll probably contact Canon about this next week. The camera is long out of warranty, however. Is this the excuse I need to buy a new Canon 5D?

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….