Hot and cold.

In this, the Summer of the Apocalypse, it's hard to believe things are going so well. Sure, I'm frazzled and irascible, but those are the temporary states that interrupt an otherwise much happier existence than I've been used to.

Things are changing, and maybe it's the rapidity of the change that is causing me to fall behind. Just as I wrap my mind around a new event, but before I can understand it emotionally, a new crisis arises.

I gave up on music over the winter, devoting a month or two in early Spring to learning, teaching myself, a new set of languages--umbrella'ed under web development.

It started with Ruby on Rails, coming as a recommendation of a friend as I was looking to build a rideshare website. Dream big and jump in feet first but recognize the futility forthwith.

After a couple months and couple of iterations, I realized that my little rideshare website was a gimpy little punk who could never compete with such slicked-back entrepreneurs. I was content to give the people a ride first and charge later, but when you start with a profit model, you can attract investors and real professionals.

But I was smitten and blind to the flaws in my scheme up until the point that I had learned enough to work on other projects.

I realized that there's more money and less risk in working on other projects; if I get good enough, I can branch off on my own later.

I embarked on this new lifestyle within weeks of getting together with a lady who is still centrally peripheral to my life picture.

She used to live with me and, according to her, was crushing hard on me then despite its inappropriateness. I surely thought she was cute and flirted her up, but didn't think it was anything serious until it was.

And now she makes me happy whenever we're together and sad whenever we're apart.

As we near doomsday, the latter is becoming the dominant reality and my moods are swinging more and more wildly. It's a rollercoaster. Of love.

And on top of it, my things are breaking, dying, or leaving me.

My laptop, my beloved MacBook Pro--don't laugh--died a silent death in the middle of the night on the eve of July 4th. I was awoken in a drunken stupor by my roommates coming home and found that my computer had been transformed from an aluminum spaceship to the depths of my imagination and the web to a lump of inert silicon, a paperweight.

This computer had been my companion when I hibernated away a winter in Michigan and had been a great too for both music and web development. And it was I who killed it.

It had been really hot and our a/c was struggling to keep the apartment at about 85. So I put it on an ice pack from the fridge. No big deal.

But then, after a few days of doing this, I stopped putting the magazine in between the ice pack and the aluminum body and the condensation must have shorted it out.

Apple wanted 1200 to fix it, MicroCenter 1100. So I freaked out and bought a Lenovo ThinkPad and installed Linux on it.

So now I'm a *real* developer but can't do much with music.

Today, on the enlongening list of things that are weigh on my mind and soul, I took the Mac in with a 300-dollar logic board that I got from Ebay and am hoping they'll be able to make it work. So far, it's only 70 bucks; could be a bit more if that doesn't fix it.

In other news, my car got stolen. I filed a police report but haven't notified the insurance. I'll live car-free for a while and see how that goes. 

It makes small things more stressful--like going on roadtrips around the midwest--but in general, I think it will make things easier, less stressful.

Good thing there's all these rideshare websites! Including craigstlist, ridejoy, and zimride.

Irony. Karma. Fate. Whatever.

I'll keep surviving in between states of thriving. For now, I'll just fan myself in air-conditioned coffee shops and move as little as possible.