Low Sec Lifestyle

I've been thoughtful the last few days. Not because the year is ending. I enjoy my understanding of our planets behavior around its solar anchor. However, I don't find the circle to mean that I have to look back at the days. My reflective point comes instead from the approaching change to my life. Four months until CSMX is done. CSMXI is spinning up with positive and negative press. I find that I am enjoying being a step away from that. Perhaps, the hardest part of the CSM was the election phase. The second hardest part was wading through the negativity. The election period, however, was the worst. Even if I wanted to do a third year, I'd not be able to put myself through a third election. Also, in seven weeks, I have the second summit. I have a lot of things to put together and to throw on the table one last time. I have developers to reach out to and topics to bring attention to. For the most part, I'm sorting through my notes from the last two years and condensin...

In truth, this post is little more then a place holder. It is the week between Christmas and New Years. It is a quiet week. I could make up some stuff to fill space and listen to myself talk. Instead, see you here next week. I figure things will pick up the week after.

I received a good suggestion about the Archon that I won in the Pod and Planet contest. I'm going to send it back to the contest to be liquidated as part of the future prize pool. I'm not doing it for credit. I am not big into donations. I don't want a sign that says 'Sugar donated X amount of ISK'. I don't care about those things. I don't want the ship. The reason for donation is that I believe in supporting things that I want to happen. Of course, I could just give ISK. However, I'm a bit of an ISK hoarder. It is easy to give stuff then to give ISK for me. The Pod and Planet contest is, perhaps, one of my favorite things. Over the past four years it has cleaned up my writing in ways nothing else has. I've often dreamed of becoming an author simply because of love of books is so incredible. Its been a long struggle. Over the years I've had to gain life experience and then writing experience. It is a side effect of Eve that I started to appre...

This has been an odd week for not writing. Sometime, earlier today I realized that someone out there might take it wrong. The reason has been because I've been working. I've been getting home late every day as well thanks to the holidays. As, for the most part a holiday Grinch, its left me with about 2 hours to eat dinner, walk my dogs, and hit the bed before I have to be up for the next twelve. Now, I have some days off. Not because of Christmas. It is just my normal set of days off. However, work should improve now. I also learned from Epi's latest post that its normal to reflect and such things. I'll stand up and say, "No thanks!" I normally skip the holidays but people have been super kind to me this year. I even got gifts which leave me feeling a bubbling warmth and a bit of embarrassed lack of worth. I do appreciate it. That someone has taken the time to work through the things that interest and delight me is uplifting in a way few other things are....

We're just under a week out from Christmass. On the 16th, CCP aired the o7 show . From what I gather there were no huge reveals. That is not surprising. Things are quiet but busy as they work towards the expansion. The new launcher is out of Beta .  I haven't installed it yet. The long list of changes and updates makes me happy. I'm not one to opt in early to new tech. I like my access to my hobbies to work and not give me amazing surprises. The new camera is also in beta . So far, I've heard mostly horror. It is not that the features the new camera give are bad. It is that the new camera does not have a 'classic' camera. Opinions? With Christmas in the air, some rebalancing was done to the project Frostline sites . Get them while you can. It won't be forever. I had wondered if Project Frostline would be all of Christmas. I refused to dig any deeper. Christmas presents are not a CSM thing in my opinion. I have also found myself rather upset with people...

The results of the Pod and Planet contest are out. I placed first in the 8,000 Sun's category for my story, "Cortex."  That category is for cannon and I find I've become really interested in trying to write true Eve fiction. I'm surprised that I placed and super happy. I only had one entry this year. With Eve Vegas and CSM stuff and my new work schedule I didn't have enough extra juice to write more. I did pour everything into it and I'm thrilled with the results. Contests are hard for me. I really want to do well. I don't like direct competition. Things like the writing contest allow something to stand on its own and be judged. I'm more comfortable with that. And it pushes my comfort zone but I can still kind of drop my story on Telegraph Sam's desk and run away squeeing into the night. I'm thrilled. My writing has really progressed over the last few years and I have really enjoyed these contests. Next year, he just has to not run it...

Sugar is poor. The person that plays Sugar has ISK across several accounts but Sugar, as an individual character, is poor. That was to keep my ISK safe from an oops. She rarely had more then a hundred million on her and normally less then that. It let me safely handle scam contracts and such things. That got in the way when I decided to undock and get the new Command Destroyer skill book. I pried myself from the warm seat I had made in Jita and after much whining, was directed to a skill book store. Such was my glorious undocking into the wilderness of the Jita undock. Shuttles are very cool. They are cheap and they are fast. But, in Jita they are also targets. I find myself feeling rather stupid that I want to fly around in a shuttle. Someone can pop it just for the hope that I've stuffed my cargo full of goodies at not great loss to themselves. I docked up. Then Eve crashed. Then it came back up. I sniffed about the corners of my Jita hangar and pulled back the dust cl...

On Sundays, I try to attend Seamus Donohue 's weekly game mechanics class on Eve Uni's public mumble . I started attending a bit before CSM9 started. It was a good way to connect with newer players and see what questions they brought forward. Over the last two years, it has also been a place to look at Eve in different ways. Seamus is a self described carebear but his knowledge of mechanics and game design is in depth. I've had people express surprise that I attend this. I learn a lot in these discussions. There are so many areas of the game I have not played. It also moves me outside of my familiar circles. People are not ashamed of running missions and mining here and the questions are broad and the topics interesting. This afternoon, before I had to scoot to pick the husband up from the airport, they were discussing grid sizes. In this discussion, Seamus casually discusses grid size and pulls out a calculator for a few square root multiplication processes to discuss...

I'm out of the loop these last two weeks. I had to step back from Eve for a bit. It is to easy to let the emotions of one thing filter into everything else. I hope you read the patch notes . I undocked and peered around Jita for a bit to eyeball the changes to the grid sizes . It seems pretty cool. I know that there has been some chatter about changing the warp distances with the increase to grid size. Opinions? As I open up again, I see a lot of chatter about Operation Frostline . In one way I want to participate and find cool loot. In another, my anti-holiday spirit makes me want to huddle in my hangar and be grumpy. The updates for the new Tranquility cluster continue . This is something I am still very pleased is happening. There used to be more technical information sharing between CCP and the players. Eve's server cluster has been featured time and time again over the course of the games existence. The player base has taken pride in that before and it is a healthy p...

Last week, I was going to sit down and write about passion. Then life happened and the idea floated in the limbo that is the back of my mind. Now, as I start to resurface into Eve, I see that the world is again on fire for the sake of watching itself burn. I find it weird but I'm going to let it go by as I see myself not interested in involvement. It did remind me of my earlier thoughts and kicked the topic back out of limbo. Passion is nether good nor bad. It is an intensity. What we are passionate about may be good, bad, or neutral. I consider my passion for the color blue to be neutral. I consider my passion for sweet drinks to be bad. My passion for my dogs is good.  Passion is not a casual feeling. Passion is not love. It is not hate. Passion amplifies these things. I greatly enjoy my favorite restaurant but I am not passionate about it. It grabs us and acts almost as if it is a propellant for our emotions. That's what makes it so dangerous. The intensity o...

It is interesting, in the end, the way choices come and go. Choices that you expected to make are not made. Decisions parade past you and toss their heads snickering as they lunge out of your grasp. Even choices made that were good choices reek of failure and hindsight. On Friday, I knew where I was in regards to Nyx. I had some heavy thinking to do. One of the most painful parts of pet ownership is financial limits. We have worked to reach the point where we can get the care needed for our pets at short notice. The question is, "Will that care do anything?" Will it make a difference of a day, a week, a month, or a year? It is an ugly question. It fights against wants and reasons. Emotional minds and rational minds clash. We must acknowledge our limitations and potential futures. With that comes a layer of guilt and a feeling of inadequacy that almost drove me to my knees. It makes you question the want and the reality of "I'd do anything." When I wrote on...

Hey there, I've had a crazy week. Last Friday my hot water heater died. It made for a long, cold weekend until it was fixed. At the same time, one of my dogs started acting ill. I got her into the vet on Thursday and spent a lot of money running a lot of tests. I also posted a picture of her at the end of testing day on twitter. Her entire chest and belly are shaved from ultrasounds so she got her jacket to keep warm and a place on the heated blanket on my mother's bed. I discussed Nyx's name a few months ago . I post pictures of her pretty regularly. She is an eight year old Doberman Pincher and I named her before I knew anything about Eve. She is named after the goddess Nyx. She is also named after my German Shepherd, Nox. Nox's name was the roman translation of Nyx. Naming Nyx after Nox appealed to me because she would grow to fill his shoes. There is a lot about me I've never shared with Eve. Nothing weird or nefarious. My closet is skeleton free...