It was a lazy Saturday afternoon, this past Saturday, in fact, and I was sipping coffee and trolling the Web for the latest baseball news. To be honest, I really don’t care if Albert Pujols re-signs with the St. Louis Cardinals or if some aging retread signs a $750,000 minor league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. But it’s been three-and-a-half months since the World Series ended and I was seriously jonesin’ for baseball and consumed any crumb of news I could find. So I looked away from my screen and turned toward Miiko, who was smiling at me. Did I need to proof some dreadfully dull PowerPoint? Or do some equally dreadful household chore? I had already cleaned the swimming pool in the morning, dammit.

Dread crept in.

“I need you to research good digital cameras,” she said. “I have to shoot The Black Keys concert on Monday night and we have to buy a good one.”

Oh cool. Buy technology. That’s not a chore. That’s fun. We’ve never owned a decent camera. Miiko takes all her photos on her iPhone. I’ve got a five-year-old point-and-shoot digital camera and a crappy 2-megapixel camera on my BlackBerry that never takes any good photos because of the ever-present pocket lint from my pants that coats the lens.

I needed camera-buying tips, but whom should I call? My dad was a photographer in his early 20s, but he’s been out of the business for a long time, so not him. I went to journalism school with a bunch of photographers, but messaging them through Facebook was not immediate enough. There was only one person I could call: Gordon. He’s a long-time friend and one of my go-to guys in time of personal or technology crisis. So I called, and as usual, he dispensed solid advice and followed up with a detailed email with even more advice. Our choices were the mid-range Canon EOS Rebel T2i (about $800) to the high-end Canon EOS 7D and 5D Mark II (which ran in the $1,500 to $2,500 range and shot high-quality video to boot). It really depended on whether my wife, an experienced videographer, wanted to use the camera to shoot videos in the future.

I was open. But Miiko already has video equipment and has no plans to use an SLR for video, so the T2i it was. We checked out Sam’s Club, which is two blocks from us, and Best Buy at the mall. And Sam’s Club won out with an $828 price tag.

The first part of the problem was solved. We bought a decent camera. Now it was time to tackle the second part of the problem. Neither of us had any photography training whatsoever. Well, when I was 19 or 20 and I was interning at my local weekly San Francisco newspaper, the photo editor took me under his wing for a few weeks before giving up. I had to do a “Question Man” column, where you ask five people the same question like, “If you could change one thing about San Francisco, what would it be?” and then take their mug shots and it would run in the paper. I still remember one day, when I thought I had taken some stellar photos, the exasperated photo editor yelled at me to join him in the dark room.  When I walked in, he showed me the negatives, pointed to a photo of a man and asked, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

Umm. (Silence.)

“What’s wrong is you have him staring at the sun. The poor guy is squinting.”

Oh.

And that was the extent of my photography career. Clearly, my dad’s photographic talents were not handed down to me. I really can’t take a photograph to save my life.

Late Sunday night, after packing for her trip, she finally got around to taking the camera out of the box and looked at the instructions. We spent the next hour in the first floor of our house, figuring out the camera settings and trying to emulate a concert setting. No, we didn’t whip out a karaoke machine. We turned off the light in the kitchen, kept the lamp on in the living room, and from the far end of our dark kitchen, we tried taking photos of the sofa in the living room. And to our surprise, the photos came out and they were quite good. (Well, as good as boring photos of a sofa could be).

On Monday afternoon, Miiko flew to Vegas and that night, I tried to send positive vibes her way, knowing she was photographing the concert. At around 9:30 p.m.,  I couldn’t wait anymore and texted her, asking how the camera was. She replied, “Great! Thank God for auto features!”

Haha!

Here’s the link to all the photos, and below are some examples of her work.  I think they turned out pretty good for a novice photographer. I’m really proud of her.

And then on Tuesday night, she shot a second concert and Tweeted this photo of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Anyway, Miiko, who normally telecommutes from Arizona, has spent the whole week at her workplace in Vegas. On Wednesday afternoon, she shot even more photos, this time the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar models. They weren’t in their bikinis, though. It was just an autograph session, she told me.

What a tough life she has. Sheesh.

When she comes home, I can’t wait to play with the camera and try to take pictures with it.

A few days ago, I got a spam email, saying: “15 days until pre-registration ends!” The next day, I got an email that said: “14 days until pre-registration ends!” Today, I got an email that read: “50 days until UNITY!”

Well, here’s how I figure it. For the $500 for roundtrip airfare and the $375 it would cost for pre-registration, not to mention food and other expenses, I can buy three new second-generation iPhones for my whole family.

The geek in me wins out!

And yes, I think I’m going to choose the new 3G iPhone over the new BlackBerry Bold.

A month ago, on Tuesday, Feb. 5, I thought the only important thing going on in the world was Super Tuesday and the race for delegates in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.

Silly me.

It turns out that same week was Chinese New Year.

My reminder? My globe-trotting friend Amber, who now lives in Taiwan, posted a new blog that same day with the headline: “Happy Chinese New Year!”

Oops.

That same night, two days before the actual Chinese New Year, and with Super Tuesday results blaring on the TV, I was in my home office in Arizona, technolusting after a new BlackBerry.

I’m eyeing this one!

My current boring Motorola Razr works fine as a phone. But it doesn’t let me check and send email while I’m out and about. I’m not sure if I really need to be that connected, but it’s all about instant gratification, dammit.

Mr. Razr phone, you were oh-so-cool two years ago. But… it’s no longer working out between us. I’m sorry.

I looked at my instant messaging window and saw my BlackBerry-toting cousin Doug online, so I pinged him.

“Dude,” I wrote, “I’m lusting after a BlackBerry. Which one should I get?”

A minute later he answered back. “The Curve. It’s good. Nice and easy,” he wrote back. “I’m texting you on it right now. It’s cheap now, too! Like $100.”

A minute later, he wrote again: “BTW… Family says hi…We’re eating crab as we speak.”

Oh… crap!

My family traditionally celebrates Chinese New Year with a week’s worth of dinners at grandma’s house in San Francisco, where grandma cooks up a lot of traditional food that we only see once a year. But like any typical Wong family gathering, she and my uncle always spice it up with an insane amount of delicious seafood.

I was suddenly flooded with images of Dungeness crab, lobster, crawdads, oysters and clams. Screw the BlackBerry! I want some seafood!

I wrote back to my cousin: “F’n A! I always miss the good seafood meals!”

Minutes later, the taunting began.

My brother Dan emailed me a picture of the crab they were eating from his BlackBerry.

“Sigh, crab is almost done. A three-pounder today, too!” he wrote.

I IM’d him back, telling him he was evil.

The next night, the family gathered again for another New Year’s dinner, and this time my sister-in-law got into the act, emailing me this picture from her Apple iPhone.

And then Dan followed up with another picture from his BlackBerry.

Shit! Damn! Fuck! The taunting was unbearable. Not only were they eating great seafood, they all had better cell phones than me!

I desperately needed some Dungeness crab – and fast.

That week, I was planning to donate $100 to my favorite presidential candidate, but instead, I decided to funnel my donation into what I called: my special Chinese New Year Seafood Fund.

The next afternoon, on Chinese New Year, I called up Saigon Pho & Seafood, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in town, and ordered this beauty: a two-pound “Saigon Special Crab” for $24.

It was delicious.

Two days later, I bought another crab, this time a live two-pounder from the local Asian supermarket for $12. I went home, steamed it, and it, too, was delish.

From my calculations, I still have $64 in my seafood fund. But I’m going to divert that into my “Buy a new BlackBerry Fund.”