Ever have one of those days where something goes perfectly right, only for something else to unexpectedly go horribly wrong and spiral downward out of control without any hope of finding a way to come back from it?

I’m having one of those weeks…. :(

It’s not every day you get to quit the retail biz because you find something better (even marginally so…), so needless to say last week I experienced one of the greatest feelings someone could possibly ever feel when I was offered the position of Art Director with the new t.o.night newspaper. It’s a new free daily that was started up at the beginning of September this year and is distributed Monday through Friday in the evening in downtown Toronto.

So far I’ve had lots of great fun doing page layouts and advertisements (I even got to design my first billboard ad the other day).

Unfortunately this is where the crap starts to spin wildly out of control.

Since I moved to Toronto in June I’ve been running off of my laptop since my powerhouse desktop machine is still up in Northern Ontario – driving this “portable” computing thing into the ground is probably a more operative assessment. And while the Toshiba Satellite A70 was a peak performer in it’s time (WAYYYYYY wayy back in December 2004), it has now been reduced to nothing more than a mere paperweight…

For the last few months ol’ Shiba has been getting more and more sluggish, and I’ve run everything I could throw at it to try and salvage the thing; always pushing for more time to save up enough money for a new machine (i.e.: something significantly more portable, as this 12lbs beast is anything but). However on this most recent attempt to reinvigorate the beast, it has decided that it no longer knows how to install an operating system – each time I insert the Windows 7 disk, informing me that it is lacking some DVD-ROM drivers (curious considering it booted the disc in the first place), let alone not even recognizing the Windows XP disc…..

*groan*

Needless to say, I’ve got my work cut out for me right now trying to fix this stupid thing, but at least I got all of my important files off of it this time around…..unlike last time when I almost lost everything…..

In other news:

• The Tridia EP is at a standstill until I can get my hands on a djembe so I can record the percussion tracks for the four acoustic songs.
• I have not had internet at my apartment in nearly two weeks – and I’ve come to realize really just how much I rely on the ol’ series of tubes that is the interwebz….. I’m like an addict going into withdrawl.
• There should be some news on the HUD and Stratasfear fronts soon, as my new job’s wonderfully lighter work schedule allows for much more time for content creation from here on out. :)

<3 Stephenson