lowquality.net

So today my 667mHz Powerbook Titanium finally shit the bed. It’s been used and abused by me for about 3 or 4 years, and even though it has sustained a few spills and thrills it has managed to hold itself together (mostly). Today I was attempting to rip the new Asobi Seksu CD (which is great, by the way) and my system froze and then when I forced a restart it never came back up– just a desolate gray screen followed by a flashing question mark. Disk Utility revealed some kind of “invalid B-tree Node Size” corruption error, which amounts to my hard disk being unmountable. With a little research I discovered that this error can be repaired using one of the many third-party disk utilities out there for Mac OS X, but I really don’t have the 80 bucks for Disk Warrior at the moment. So my powerbook is going to sit in the closet for a little while, at least until I remember that there is something important on it that I need to retrieve, then I will fork over the money for Disk Warrior. This issue, combined with the broken screen and non-charging battery have made my TiBook more of a invalid grandparent than a personal computer.

I briefly considered buying a new Macbook with my credit card today. I’m serious. The thought actually crossed my mind. Of course, my better judgement got a hold of me and I didn’t do it. If I am to throw 2,000 bucks on a credit card it’s going to be to purchase a bass.

Speaking of which, I have been seriously neglecting the bass lately. I picked it up today for a few hours and it felt like I hadn’t been playing. Never a good feeling. I have been seriously concerned that by going to ECPI and diverting my focus away from music, that I will eventually abandon music completely. The fear may prove to be a kind of become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the thought of music being crowded out of my life has bummed me out so much that I haven’t really been in the mood to do much musically. Basically, I haven’t touched my bass in about a week.

I have also decided to quit the Jay Rakes Band so that I can have more time in my schedule to do school and work a day job this summer (I will talk more about that on a later date). Knowing that I am consciously sacrificing my time spent playing music just so that I can (hopefully) have a job I am not so excited about is scary and depressing. This is the stuff weekend warrior cover band musicians are made of. The alternative, however, is playing awesome music and fighting off the collection agencies that come pounding on my door down so that they can retrieve my missed student loan payments.

I owe a considerable amount of money for the exceptional education I received at Berklee College of Music, where not only did I obtain an incredible musical foundation, but also made the best friends of my life. So, while I don’t feel as though my tuition was wasted, I am overwhelmed with an aftermath of debt. The funny thing is that the only way I can get make a decent enough income to afford my Berklee education is to get a job (and another education) in a field that barely allows me the time to play music.

So I am going to chalf uo my TiBook’s implosion as a blessing in disguise. Hopefully I can spend some more time with the bass and less time dicking around on the internet. I still have a second-hand Dell that I use for Windows-centric school stuff, and it works well enough for anything I need to do (I’m using it right now).

Oh well, I’m going to bed.