Low Sec Lifestyle

I was pretty proud of myself. It was bedtime and I was tired but I had been productive. I had been productive during the day at home. I had meant to do a bit more in game but I was finally getting to what I needed to do. My builds would be done for the morning and I'd be right on task. I'm always pleased when I avoid the urge to not do the things that I need to get done. So, I was in warp to my tower when it hit me. I had forgot to set the password on my freighter. I was in in warp. I was in a Charon. I was in low sec. It was not a good thing. As my screen started to shake the adrenaline hit me. So many things can go wrong. How could I have forgotten to put the password in? Wex and I had discussed it extensively for the last few days. Yet, the first time I went to use it I relapsed into the habit of just warping to it. And memory came all to late. I've never been quite so happy for the slow slide out of warp on a freighter. I decided that decelerating and turning arou

I had enough to do when I woke up this morning that I just kind of collapsed into a puddle and figured I'd try to get it done. Maybe. Then I opened Rookie Chat and started answering questions for a bit. Rookie Chat almost always improves my mood. I'm an excitement vampire I guess. [18:07:12] Mike Azariah > Operation Magic School Bus will be handing out free fitted ships in gallente career systems today, starting with  Clellinon VI - Moon 11 - Center for Advanced Studies School where I am for the next ten min.  Watch local [18:07:43] Aranea > Mike Azariah just to remember, you do know that advertising is forbidden in here? Mike runs a program where he gives fitted starter ships to new players. He also has permission to advertise. It grew out of the rookie chat time from last fall. He's been quite productive with it. Seeing him scolded amused me. Especially by someone who is in rookie chat by choice. Six months ago that would have been a big deal. Now, there are peo

Mosaic is the name of the release on Tuesday. It may be one of my favorite release names yet. It is quite a pretty word. I'm glad of it, for CCP is trying to move away from release dates and an exact release schedule and into a release when ready approach. CCP Seagull outlines these goals in her dev blog. They still have five week windows for major updates but smaller changes that do not need to wait will start entering the game when they are ready. This is the reason for the development of Eve Updates . For those looking for the release dates they will be: April 28th June 2nd July 7th August 25th September 29th November 3rd December 8th I expect someone to ask me if this concerns me or comment that they are concerned. The answer is no. The teams are filled to the gills. At the moment, I cannot stuff more into their work queue. It is a very frustrating place to be. I still have things from CSM9 that I'd like to have seen and things for CSMX that are coming up from

I was on Declarations of War's latest episode (#94) and I was quite the terrible guest. They are nice about it, but I was a bad guest. I did discover some things about myself: -I'm only good at talking when I have a topic. Having a topic is easy enough in Eve. The problem is that I'm not good at more, casual chatter. I believe that I talk to much and find myself uncomfortable with talking without a defined goal, such as sharing a recipe. -I hate speculating. I find that I have nothing to say when it comes to guessing what people may do. I don't know. I want to watch and observe until I do know. But, if you ask me what I think they will do I'll flounder. -Attached to speculating comes the fact that I am an observer. I'm a lean back and watch the events go by. I'm not a major player in the greater movements in game play. The episode was very null sec focused and I realize that for everything I have learned I find myself more and more ignorant of what nul

I spent most of the last two days being very productive. In Eve and out of it. I've had that spring cleaning bug I mentioned a few weeks ago. One of the things that I said I wanted to do was shut down two accounts. Yesterday evening, I sat down to do it before they billed for another cycle. About a week ago I deleted an alt. I first made sure that she had nothing of value on her. I had created her as a drug runner some years ago. That career path failed for me and she has just been hanging around on my login screen. Well! She was in the way of one of the accounts that will be my primary so off to the vats she goes. Always make sure you log that alt in and check their assets, contracts, industry jobs, personal wallet, and corp wallet. I've heard some people lose some nice assets through alt or corporation deletion. Character deletion takes ten hours. I used to wonder why. Then I read some story of some girl deleting her boyfriends video game characters and I said, "Ah

What is Population? I was watching some light, verbal sparing about low secs population. I grew up in Molden Heath and the big city of the Citadel is still odd to me. I've often been told that Molden is a dead back water. I figured that I was rather active and kept myself busy and obsessed with Eve so it could not have been but so bad.  But, I do have to admit that it is busier in Sujarento then it was in Bosena. Busy does not make for better. Just different. What you do in each area of space changes with the population. I've never understood AFK cloaking because I am a low sec resident and I expect everyone in space with me to harm me unless they are my corporation or alliance. It makes undocking a judgement call where sometimes you lost things and sometimes you do not. But space is not dead just because the pilots we may want to populate it, do not. Non-combatants may hide under the proverbial asteroid as the sleek hunter passes by. The hunter has nothing to hunt becaus

There was a time when I stocked TCS every other day. Now it is a weekly task. That comes from both my increased volume that stays on the market and the time that I can give it. Often, I do my buys over several days and then ship them to myself. I then do the jumps and get builds going and the market stocked. In many ways I regret the ability to respond as quickly as I used to be able to. On the other hand, Sujarento is doing quite well. It is just a matter of time. Restocking is a lot of clicks. Clicks take time. With other conversations and things to write, it can take me a day or two to get everything restocked. Then I like to get up and take pictures of my garden or start prepping dinner and poof, the time is gone. Often, on my days off I start early in the morning and finish later in the day. It is one of the times I do enjoy voice coms as a primary mode of communication. It keeps my hands free. I'm also becoming more adventurous. I often say that I'm not much of a mark

I have recently had a weird problem with time zones. I've become so used to mentally converting for GMT that I keep doing it with PST as well. It leaves me saying spectacularly wrong meeting times. I might has written it off if I'd done it once but I've done it about three times in the last two weeks. I am thankful that I double check before rushing off but at the same time I am somewhat amused by the problem. It is just a matter of focus. But, I never thought about time zones before Eve. I knew that they existed. I travel enough to deal with them. But, I never had a second clock on my phone to keep up with time in another country. I would stare at the clocks on the wall at some companies. They'd have clocks showing the time at major cities all over the world or places where they had offices. It very much said, "We are an international company." A form of decorative bragging rights and a subtle reminder. But, here I am, a no one in a dead end job with time

Last night was one of our local meets for the VA/MD/DC area. I add them into these weekly updates because I normally have good conversations with people about CSM stuff. Text is a beautiful medium but face time can be very useful for these topics. We're a month into CSMX and when I saw that the alliance logo submission went live on April 15th, 2015 as promised I was ecstatic. I was also at work. About two hours later the complaints had started to roll in. The submission rules had changed. There was a lot of language about quality, type, and artistic direction. There is a grandfather clause but it is not 100%.The feedback started, the alliance number was rolled back, and the rules lawyering started.  The end answer is submit your logo. If it is rejected open up a discourse with CCP Falcon over why it was rejected. Those who visit reddit may have seen General Tso's thread  for their rejected logo. I sat down with them over it and we've developed a game plan with their artis

What value is there in a kill? The value of PvP is a strange thing to me. Value in itself is a complex word. To look at Merriam-Webster's first three definitions of value (after that technical use starts creeping in): a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged the monetary worth of something :  market price relative worth, utility, or importance  While broad in scope it is conceptually easy to grasp. It is highly personal but also easy to relate to. I may not find what you hold of value to have value but I can understand what having something valuable means to me.  What I find fascinating is that value starts to break down quickly when it comes to PvP. Yesterday, I commented on the value of character's I will not use. Today, I debated one of the terms that I truly loathe in Eve. That is the one where people complain that what is available for them to kill does not have and value to it.  I hate hearing that. One man's usele

This year I am spring cleaning like never before. Some of it is a rearrangement of my house. We're giving the basement room to be my husbands computer workshop and server room. I've been gardening. Its warm enough that I can get to work on projects like repainting the bedroom. Etc. While at work today I decided to close down two of my accounts. There is no dark or sinister reason for it. It is because I am not as active as I have been and I don't need them. I've been training them for a future date when I may want them to be able to do things. Only, I've almost never used them. What kept me going was that they had TCS alts on them. It meant deleting an alt I only used a few times. It was back when I wanted to try selling boosters in a sustainable way. I created an alt to run the goods to the buyers. That was before I fully comprehended how much I put on the line and how little I received for it. I couldn't sell those boosters for trying. The people it was su

To continue on my line of frustrated and whiny posts, on  Saturday night I came home like the partially dead thing I often am on my long work weekends. I had to change out capital builds and I was so very, very tired and whiny about it. I was just worn out and tired and frustrated with how much went into putting a capital into build. The warping, the constant mineral counts, the endless copying that my alt does. And upon realizing what an incredibly whining fit I was having I tried to turn the direction of my post around to something productive. But I failed at that time and just didn't post what I had written. I often try to dig down into what has me frustrated. Yesterday, its being to far outside of my comfort zone to a point where I am no longer able to be productive and start to break down. With my capital building it is all of the windows in and out of the client that I am relying on to build things. Once, a long time ago as a new player still fascinated with Eve's win

For reasons that I am not fully sure of I keep diving off the deep end when it comes to doing Eve things. This qualifies for both real life and the game. Such is the situation that I find myself in trying to plan the local meetups. Epi cheerfully scraped this responsibility onto me last year and I've kept at it for some reason. It was much easier when he was helping but I'm trying to do it myself and I've come to the understanding that it sucks. I've always had respect for those who plan big meetups but that respect is growing into a type of awe at their godlike powers of getting things together. One of the biggest problems is knowing how many people will go. Our meetups have been growing and people have been travelling further to come to them. That leaves a question of where will we shove everyone? At some point people have suggested tickets and RSVP and such. I shudder at that and frankly, I don't know if I want to go down that route. At the moment a headcount

CSMX got full access to CCP this week and the shared CSM/CCP channel has been buzzing along. Later, it may slow down. Confluence access is not yet together/ For now, after being pent up for some weeks there is a lot to say. With no confluence what is being said would normally go into a longer form post. And a lot of what is being said is about structures. Sov is puttering along the development path for June. The null sec guys are all over it and the takeover mechanics as well as structures. I know that the structure team has not been commenting in the threads. They have been reading them and going over the ideas, insights, and comments laid out. I'm hoping to see the follow up round soon. One question that I have been asking players in and familiar with faction warfare is market hubs in locked down systems. These hubs will be attackable. Is that content enough to allow the enemy faction(s) to access market items in a system they cannot dock in? Cruiser burners are on Sisi but

"But think of the newbies!" I like new players bunches. However, we also have veteran players in this game. While often referenced to as bittervets, not all of them are bitter. Many are. Even as I write this I am extracting myself from a conversation in Eve Uni chat with a 2008 player who is systematically hating on changes that have happened. It's enough to spoil an thoughtful evening as thick layers of venom and distaste are heaped all over every topic. But, bittervets are one of Eve's fascinating things. In a game that has been puttering along for twelve years, what do our veteran players mean in the game? At the end of last year, CCP released six million trial account names. It was the first such purge. Before then, if you created an account in Eve you always had that account to come back. I agree with unsubscribed trial account names being cleaned up. However, some have been left with the taste for more. They are sniffing around other names to free and sugges

There is a point, somewhere in the depths of Eve Online, where the game is a science fiction universe born out of creativity and imagination.  I like science fiction. I also like fantasy. In general, I enjoy taking the rules and turning them upside down. I love epics that recreate history and I enjoy new worlds where they play a balance between fiction and science using science and the general aspects of the unknown. I have times when I have to suspend my knowledge to accept older fantasy. Such is the case with " In Conquest Born " where they have a fertility problem. These days you'd just use surrogate and do DNA tests to make sure that people are pure of blood, but the book was written in the late eighties and there are allowances that must be made. When I first logged into Eve I logged into a new world. I'd need to learn about it. What and where things were. Who people defined themselves as. A part of my mind was automatically assigned to the task of learnin

I've been taking some easy, Eve days and I am glad that I have. CSMX got the CCP/CSM channel sorted out the other day and there has been a lot of chatter. I've been very caught up and distracted. In the meantime! We were given our prizes from the cosplay contest at Fanfest today. I now have a bunch of clothing on Sugar including a maroon set of tshirts that don't appear on the market. I noticed that woman's clothing and men's clothing sell for different prices. The woman's clothing tends to be more expensive. I find that amusing. I enjoyed making my jacket and my little outfit. I'd like to do so again if I go to Fanfest next year. I've also Eve Vegas to think of. That is if there is a cosplay portion. It'd be fun if there was. It'd fit in in Vegas. I was so nervous walking through Reykjavik in my Minmatar jacket with my heavy makeup on and my braids. In Vegas, I'd not stand out. Not when a black Batman rides by on a bicycle and Chewbacc

In my list of goals for this summer I've mentally jotted down finishing my History of Eve Expansion series .  I'm up to Incarna's release and shall soon dive into its after effects. Eve's history has taught me a lot about the game. It has changed my perceptions more than anything else I have done. Hindsight is a beautiful thing and the past is meant to be learned from. All the knowledge that you know can be mixed with what you learn to develop fascinating pictures of things you did not directly know but upon retrospect are clear. But that is the serious side of things. The other side, the side that would be hardest for me as a new player to uncover, is the rest of the history. The small things that existed and then changed. It is things as small as the text in the Tutorial's changing. The gruff and often sarcastic humor of the original writers has changed and will change more. Or if the movement that 'gamer's can't read' is fully embraced will v

Welcome to Easter weekend. It's been quiet. CSMX has their NDA's signed but confluence access will not hit until next week it looks like. CCP's also out on a five day holiday breaking up this week and next week with a bit of quiet time. It is not too quiet, however. CCP snuck in an o7 show in Wednesday instead of their previous Thursdays. This was on April 1st which caused some people to be disgruntled but the information released was rather true. First, thank you to Gorski Car for finding the argument that got us battlecuriser warp speed buffs . It also came up a lot during fanfest. This has been a nonstop point of contention and I am thrilled to see some changes. I know that some will ask for the old Hurricane back, but we're not getting that. The warp speed improvements, will I hope, provide some needed quality of use that can get these ships back out a little bit more. There is also the Entosis Link #2 thread . This is showing changes. There is stront use and

A non-Eve post. It involves going outside but only as far as my deck which is still attached to the house.

[TL;DR: I'm thinking out loud to clear my mind.]

There I was, hovering in space. The lurid golden green glow of the incursion was not making my day. The test server is supposed to be a place for fun and experimentation. Instead I was frustrated and committing insurance fraud and only after I had taken that little step into darkness I realized that I no longer lived in Molden Heath. Let me explain in this incredibly image heavy post.