A disaster has befallen Skimbit headquarters. My miso soup at lunch took a sudden tumble over my keyboard, resulting in the instant death of my laptop.

I remained quite calm considering, instantly rushing down to the toilets with my laptop cradled in my arms like an injured child, and sticking it under the hand-dryer in an attempt to evaporate some of the moisture off it. I just hope the heat didn’t cause more damage than it healed.

However, when I tried to turn it back on after the drying process, it remained lifeless and unresponsive. I rang up my male friend who works around the corner, and with the offer of a screwdriver and a roomful of techie men, I rushed over in the hope of salvation.

A half hour later my little laptop lay with its organs ripped out, screws lying like fleshy debris around the table, and me ardently mopping up any moisture I found with a paper napkin. It is now sitting in a coma state in front of a fan, whilst I sit on a spare computer praying and willing it to health.

Did I have a backup? Well, two months ago I did… so it won’t be the end of the world if its lost… and I’m fairly confident I can resurrect the memory and implant it into a new laptop. But it is still a bit of a disaster.

Please – dear readers – send my little laptop some good health vibes, and lets hope it decides to work again despite its bath in miso soup.

It is important when risking so much to find joy in simple things: being able to work when you like (of course, you end up working more than you would otherwise, but still…), being forced to learn restraint (as I have not been able to buy new clothes in longer than I ever have gone without), being glad the weather is so bad because you don’t feel you are missing out on anything when you work long hours… you see where I am going with this.

So in a similar vein, I am excited to say we didn’t do as bad as we could have in the Mashable Social Shopping awards. Considering we are very new, still building up our community, still improving our design and functionality, I didn’t expect to do well in such an established category.

But thanks to everyone that voted, Skimbit has managed to… not come last! I’m quite pleased with that… we still have a long long way to go, but if Skimbit’s current users and my network can push Skimbit up to compete against much more established sites, its a sign of good things to come. Well, that is how I am going to interpret that

However, besides not coming last, there have been several other useful outcomes of this exercise: firstly, it got me in touch with one of my favourite bloggers, Allen from Center Networks who is interested in finding out more about Skimbit. And it also is going to help in my current process of securing Angel funding… as to be TechCrunched and a nominated for top social shopping site of 2007 in my first week of beta launch, is not a bad way to start, is it?

See, it’s useful to find joy in such simple things!

Apologies again for my lax communication. Its just that the message has not changed overly. I’m still almost there, but not quite ready for public consumption. Sometimes I think its just that I’m terribly pedantic and proud, but there are some pretty major bugs in it still, which are getting worked on, but just not there yet…

What I am trying to do at the moment is just focus on obvious bugs that would impede a user’s ability to use or understand the application. I tend to get distracted by smallish design issues, which take up the developers time.

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Apologies for my scarcity of entries lately. Life has been tough and busy lately. My day job has gotten hugely demanding, and I’m on the verge of launching my business. Life has become all about work at the moment, and my sleep levels, social life and exercise regime have suffered. I keep thinking surely this is only short-term, but the truth is, I cannot see an end in sight: until this business becomes self-funding, I have no choice but to work these crazy hours.

The hardest thing to deal with is lack of human contact outside of work hours. I live alone, which I love most of the time, except when all I do after work is go home and work til late. It can get a little lonesome.

The next hardest thing to deal with is the physical pain. No matter what you do, sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours a day, all week, is going to hurt your body. My back, neck, shoulders, and head are pretty much in a permanent state of anguish. I’d love to see a physiotherapist, but that requires time and money, neither of which I have in abundance at the moment.

So, I just find myself willing to be bestowed strength from my ancestors, hardy Cuban peasants and Spanish labourers, who lived tough lives without complaint. My life can hardly be called tough, comparatively. So I work long hours and my back hurts. I also live in a beautiful city, have a lovely home, and am surrounded by supportive friends and family. When my site becomes successful, all this will have been worthwhile, and even will enhance the value of the story. This is what I have to keep reminding myself!