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

It seems the week was not as calm as I thought it was. I do not watch streams and I have decided to step away from several areas of Eve media for a bit. Because of that, I've slowly acquired second hand knowledge of things that are coming. It seems that links are headed towards being on grid. This I learned second hand from a stream that CCP Fozzie was on. I don't know what stream or when. It is not surprising news. Changes to links were always dependent on Brain in a Box. With that deployed it looks like CCP has made their decision to change links. I have no knowledge of what their plans are. I have also seen some references to Rorqual sized mining drones. This, as far as I understand, was announced and shared at Eve Down Under. I did not know it was on the board nor do I have any further details about it. I will assume that it was during something CCP Larrikin discussed as that he is the lead on Capital changes. CCP Fozzie has also released the Logistic Frigate stats o

On April 7th, 2013 I wrote this blog post and never published it: Kittens was collecting corpses on a gate the other day and bantering with LR. LR pops corpses because they show up in his overview. Kittens collects corpses and feels that LR should scoop the corpses and deliver them to him instead of destroying them. It was a random discussion but it led to LR telling kittens that his job wasn't to collect corpses but to put kill on the killboard. That was his primary focus as a member of THC2. I interjected at that point. Often times, with conversations like that, I try not to say anything. Often, I fail. But if the primary purpose in THC2 is to put kills on the killboard I completely, and totally fail at that. LR was kind enough to give me an exception clause for the other things that I do and Diz stepped up to say that as long as people are having fun things are successful. However, I clung to that exception clause because I do not like it. I do not have a particular desir

My current lifestyle changes comes with the ability to exercise a lot more. I'm logging in serious hours on foot these days much to the hopeful happiness of my future booty and belly. As part of my monitoring, I decided to indulge in a FitBit. I chose one that checks my heart rate constantly and has cute features, one of which is being a watch. I really needed the watch. With the american shopping Holiday here, I decided to wait for a sale. The sale came and I picked up my expensive gadget at a little less expensive. Everything arrived today and I chortled to myself while I synced it to my phone, told it that I was indeed very fat. All set with my device, I've spent the day trying and failing to ignore my arm. I've not worn a watch in about ten years so having one has been very disorienting. However, its more then a watch and occasionally I look at the various stats and chortle while hoping I don't become a bad review on Amazon in a week or two. I'm coming into

I'm tired. My month of a weird, mixed schedule has come to a close. Because of it, I have the next four days off and I am quite looking forward to them. I'll probably be able to think about Eve again. While my new position makes work much more pleasant, nothing makes the hours shorter. Today was Thanksgiving. I worked it as I have for the bulk of Thanksgivings during my adult life. Please, don't pity me. I've never worked a normal office job where you get holidays off. I have no idea what that life is like and I don't miss what I've never had. Plus, I am a holiday Scrooge type as far as I can tell. While we don't do a Thanksgiving spread, we do like the traditional foods. Turkey is not something I often make. They are to big for a two person household. My husband also has no deep link to Thanksgiving. He is British after all. Instead, we order a Thanksgiving meal from Bob Evans. It's quite delicious and it is how we have had a sensible, easily mana

Who knew that having terrible reception at work for the last two weeks would be such a positive. I feel nice and clear headed. For those that attended Eve Vegas, CCP sent out a survey. I appreciate these things and I try to write honestly. I liked most of the events. I also have little else to compare the event to. Eve is the only game that I play that interests me enough to go to wider events. I did hate on the party. The music was horrifically loud and increase in volume during the night. I suspect as people consumed their alcoholic beverages and their voices rose, the music went up to compensate. All that meant was by 2200 it was unbearably loud and I was yelling at people standing directly beside me. The first year that I went to Eve Vegas, I skipped the party. The second year I went, but left after a bit of speaking to no one and watching people mingle. The view atop Rio was amazing and I drank that in for several hours. The third year, having been elected to the CSM, people

Tis the season if you are into holidays. Thanksgiving in the USA has been plowed over by the voracious market of Christmas. CCP Seagull released an update and inside of it is something called Operation Frostline. She suggests that you pay attention. Plus, we're getting new ships in December. A lot of new ships. Dev blogs teach us all sorts of new things. Team Tech Co is the team behind Brain in a Box. While releasing this major update to Eve's Eveness, they also slipped in a CREST update that allows players to save out of game fits directly to their characters. Consider me pleasantly surprised. It is a useful quality of life update. I have studied the killboard of those I admire and stolen a fit or two. With these uploads, saved fittings and multi-buy, putting a ship together is becoming a smoother process. Hopefully, some of us will not need to go back to the market half a dozen times in the future. I've been asked a few times if the skill point reimbursement is don

Having completed this build I pondered the slow drag of the last two months as I've worked on it. In the end, I did not enjoy building it. I am okay with that. I don't feel as if I wasted time. I'm not unhappy with my choice. There are no regrets. I tried something and after finishing it, I pondered my feelings for the situation. Fun has been an elusive term for me. I enjoy a lot of things. Sometimes that enjoyment is only discovered once the process is over. It reminds me of some books that I have read. Page for page they did not thrill me but whenever I put them down and the entire story merged together I was entranced by it. Trying things and the success and failures keep me going. I don't like to fail. I'd love to be perfect at everything that I do. I've yet to find the reality where I am always perfect. Instead, there is a base acceptance that I may or may not do well at something. Trying it what lets me figure it out. There is a safety to an interact

Gasping and panting I dragged myself across the line of this capital build, finally. I am only about two months behind where I planned to be with it. Holy hell. My ability to focus on things in game and be productive has taken an incredible, embarrassing, and somewhat horrific turn. In many ways I am still finding out how much doing something for someone else motivated me. Right now, I'm tired. The stress of hauling was to much so I paid to have a lot of stuff moved. That is burning through ISK that has no return because I have not made ISK in about six months. The project I am working on does not motivate me. Jump, move, dump, build, jump warp, dock, move, move, move, find out I didn't bring enough stuff again, get, move, dock, jump, warp... etc. I've been doing the same things for years and I enjoyed it. But alone, it is not fun. It is just something to be done. That left me staring at a less than one million ISK trit shortage with a resigned horror that made me wan

The difference in price for a Prorator between Hek and Jita turned out to be about fifty million ISK. Thank goodness I misread my asset list. The misread happened when I attempted to plug in a build and got an error on megacyte. Of course I did. I'm almost done the build and things have been going well. Something had to happen. I think I have enough of everything else. I think. These are the times that I wish I was a spreadsheet guru. I would have automatic tables built in that told me things. As it is, I stumble around and bump my head into the well until a ship is built or I pass out. I decided to go with Friction Nozzle Joints. Where I am going if I am caught I am dead. On the flip side, hopefully no one will be around when I jump in and my paranoia will make me chuckle a bit. Maybe. Being on my own, fitting ships is more about what I want to do with them. With no meta to worry about and no fleet doctrine to fit to, I have spent more time scrolling through modules to see w

I'd like to thank everyone that responded to my search for experience in capital warfare in low security space. Please know that I am also glaring at you for not signing up before I started begging. Once I did people fell out of the bushes all over the place. Unfortunately, this is not a topic that I want to address based off of only my personal experience and knowledge. Feedback has been coming in from Sisi about the changes to the camera . These changes where announced at Eve Vegas. For anyone willing to check out Sisi, please give the new camera  look. One of the major complaints I am hearing is that it does not have a 'classic' mode. It does cool things and detaches and such but the lack of 'normal' or 'classic' camera is bothering people, especially when it comes to manual piloting. I have also heard that it is lagging and sluggish. This, I expect will improve and I'll keep listening in. Also on Sisi is the first changes to grid size . This one

To my surprise, I woke up around 0830 this morning. I wasn't expecting that. These last two weeks I have manipulated my schedule to accommodate a co-workers needing to take leave at the last minute. With my new position this type of manipulation is easily approved. However, it has been exhausting as I've compressed my schedule. That's how I found myself awake early, wanting to try my new boots on. I think I would have slept in if it were not for the boots. Anyway, I tried them on and they look great. But! I remembered to do some Eve stuff. I have managed to drag most of the supplies for my project into low sec. I've been building away, much to my great glee. But, watching some of the comments on multi-buy from Vov as he was debating doing some runs on T2 ships. I realize that it is another feature that I've supported and cheered into the game but haven't gotten a chance to use. There is so much Eve to relearn and learn. I'm rather excited. I am sure th

I did it. I dove deep into the Fallout 4 void for the day. It was lovely. I've been working a modified schedule at work and my days off are out of wack. Plus, my husband has first dibs because unlike me, he does not care for spoilers I was skimming reddit on Tuesday and I saw people raging out about spoilers. Some where accidental. Different people have different enhancements for reddit and some show pictures. Other's where purposeful, planted by ether members of our community or other's who had decided to creep in and upset people. It is my great fortune that I am not spoilt by knowledge of the end of something or what will happen. Why this is, I am unsure. I'm prone to read the ending of a book that I find very enthralling if I catch myself reading to fast or skipping bits to get on with it. It does not ruin it for me. It lets me appreciate hte journey to get to the ending. That trip is what I enjoy. My husband also enjoys that trip. However, the first time he m

This is not really an Eve related post but because I shared it on Twitter, it goes here for those wanting to see the entire story. On the Sunday at Eve Vegas, I got a text message from an unknown number. It said, "You back yet?" I left a "?" behind. I had given my number to a few people so I had no idea who was messaging me. They never responded. I didn't think much of it until I received a message this evening during a lull at work that said, "Hey faggot" from my unknown number. There are a lot of ways to respond to that. I decided to do the simple thing and say, "Good chance it is the wrong number" in response. They responded, "No its not." Now, I got mischievous. I will admit I was interested in what would happen if I talked to someone that greeted me with such energy as I felt in that hearty "Hey faggot" I received. I've seen amazing text message conversations before and I wondered how I would do. Yes

Remember, remember, the third of November... did I get that right? Eve online: Parallax was released successfully full of bugs. It is not as bad as it could be. Brain in a Box was released and while it has been running wild in wormhole space, giggling and harassing the residents, for the most part the defects have been swiftly attacked. Your skills might be broken. Your links may not work. Your wormhole life may be confusing now that you have eight high spots on your probing frigate. Duel training might not be what you'd like it to be. And if the POS or POCO that you shoot laughs at you, don't worry. Fires are being put out at good speed. The new scanning interface has been released as an opted in beta feature. This has made some people mad. They don't want to be testers for CCP. I've learned that testing is a touchy subject and people don't want to put their free time into testing and everything should be perfect when released. If you don't like it, p

Since the first, awkward implementation of the SKIN system, I've been a supporter. There is the fact that it has been a long requested feature in EVE Online. Many a player has fallen in love with a ship simply for its design. I've been one of them. I also fall in love with ships for their abilities and the joy of flying them. But sometimes, it is their design. With the approach of the skill packets, I decided to get more familiar with Aurum. It means gold. I walked by a jewelry store in Reykjavik named Arurum. I went, "Ah." That was for the most part my interaction with the word and the item. Shopping is not my strong point. At Vegas, I dithered over buying a mug because shopping. I've been the one screaming 'mugs' in the background constantly. Yet, no mug came home with me because I'm not an impulse buyer. I have to not only like it and want it, I need to like it and want it a few days later too. But, this isn't about my mug. Not really. It is

It has always been a habit on this blog for the author to write about whatever is on the authors mind. That would be me and my mind with this being my blog. I write about the good and I write about the bad. I sometimes regret that I do this. Not for actual personal regret, but because it always has unexpected side effects. Being someone who spends their time examining their personal motivation, I'm often left confused that other people do not. Basically, I mean what I say and it confuses me when and that other people do not. I'm a terrible lair. Not because I cannot lie but because I am interested in the truth and lies get in the way. Often times, when things are said to me, I try to do the water off a ducks back. Know that I am actually terrible at doing this. "Why did they say that? What caused them to mean that? Where? When? How? Can it be fixed? That was not the intent, how can greater clarity happen?" That's me and it seems that's wrong. It causes me a