Tripping Over Probes

There was a Multispec probe again right in the undocking corridor of the Uni of Caille, Ney campus.

These days I can't find anything in any of the neighbouring systems, and this extends to the nearby low security ones. It's annoying, honestly. I keep tripping over other people's probes and my own seldom pick up anything anymore.

I'm not sure what to do about it, short of moving base and finding greener pastures, as the ancient saying goes.

Fight Night - Result

I have just one word to describe how Fight Night went for me: embarrassing.

Out of six fights, or so, I managed to prevail in just a single one, and even so it was a very close contest.

More to be had next week, I suppose, if I can find it in me to go through the humiliation again. At least morale seemed to be up. Everyone likes to shoot a CEO from time to time.

Fight Night

The whole Tournament craze has hit even our peaceful Dragonstar. Gerrard instituted a fight night on wednesdays for the corporation - cheap T1 only. Tonight I'll give it a try myself.

It's a strange feeling to go into a ship with the intention of shooting down another capsuleer - and not just any capsuleer, either: a corp mate. It's been years since I went out with the hunting frame of mind. It sits strangely with me.

My prediction is that I won't actually be very impressive and the guys will be able to vent whatever frustrations by managing to shoot down their CEO.

I'll try to give them a run for their money.

Dragonstar Humour (II)

Yes, these are real ships in our fleet...

Alliance Tournament - Day 2

As predicted I missed quite a few matches, sadly, being away from home. But I did manage to steal my dad's laptop and tune in to Eve Radio for some commentaries.

Stuff I remember:

-- Frustration over Amarr Militia losing by one single tiny point. Five more seconds and they would have popped that ship! Damn you, CCP Claw! :(

-- Woohoo to Gallente Militia for a very convincing win!

-- Oh dear.. Matari Militia seemed to have a very poor match, the only one of the militias to not really put up much of a fight, from what I could glean from the commentaries.

Will now spend a week speaking to friends I know in some of the alliances trying to figure out just which pilots flew exactly for the teams I'm following. I can't make out the names even on the HD videos already on YouTube and the commentators usually don't care enough to enlighten us on that respect.

(Would be funny if a football commentator ever forgot to let us know at the start of a game who exactly was on the field :P)

Alliance Tournament - Day 1

The tournament has kicked off with the first half of the preliminary rounds.

As I thought, I'm having a hard time visualising just what is going on in the arena from audio commentaries alone. It could be (well, almost certainly is) because of the quality of the commentaries. I am convinced of this because I was having troubles on the first half but had a much easier time on the second half, and I attribute that to Verone being a much better commentator than KIA Eddz. And I'm not even talking about the fact Eddz seems to stick his foot in his mouth about five times a match >.<

Comments like "we really must thank the organisers of this tournament... because it makes for great viewing... although you can't view it" are really not very helpful, let me tell you, Eddz.

Anyway, I managed to stay online all afternoon long listening to commentaries. I'm not going to be able to do that tomorrow, but it seems not all is lost. Word is CCP is filming and will make the matches available on YouTube in the next few days.

This is great news to me because I like to try to pick out names I know from the teams on the arena and see how they do. And I really really want to see who flew for the victorious Electus Matari team \o/ I wanna be able to buy them a drink in one of the many bars in Eve! Good start for EM!

Tomorrow there will be more, though likely I'll miss a bunch of matches. Lunch with parents will do that :/ I'm already going to get weird looks by insisting on tuning to Eve Radio from dad's laptop at 15h precisely to see how the Amarr Militia does. I have an alt there (the Militia, not the Tournament team, of course) and some friends might be in the arena, so I'll want to be rooting for them too.

For tomorrow: Go Amarr! Go Gallente!!

Alliance Tournament - no Eve TV?

Blah, I just found out the 6th Alliance Tournament is only going to get TV coverage of the finals. I'm not just disappointed, I'm downright annoyed and yes, a bit angry. I mean damnit, I finally knew people who might be fighting, and I certainly had reasons for rooting for some teams, but now I get no coverage? This sucks! >.<

Yes, I know, we get commentaries. Football games (soccer to you americans) are interesting and exciting on TV. They're boring and annoying to listen to on the radio. I imagine the same will happen with the Tournament.

Not that I will know because the thing about limiting coverage to radio/voice commentary is that I'll need to actually be online at the very times the fights are happening to get the commentary. Unless someone podcasts this so I can listen in later, I'll have an option of remaining glued to the Net all weekend long or miss precisely the fights my friends are likely to take part in in order to, you know, not alienate my family and loved ones on the weekend.

Do we know if this is even getting recorded in some way that we might download later on?

Meh.

Anyway, for what it's worth: Go EM! Go Gallente Militia!

Interstellar Intrigue

The jin-mei capsuleer sat at her desk, scowling at the small casing for the electronic version of Tomb of Talocan, by one Rebecca DiAngelo. One particular paragraph on the blurb had burned itself into her mind and kept her scowl firmly in place.

It always starts with a dame. Today, race starlet Kayleigh Jamieson in tears, and in trouble.

They made her sound like some helpless little woman, who couldn't get by without the help of Jude. It was made-up from one end to the other. Not to mention bad literature, too.

Except... Whoever had thought to link her and Jude, of all people? True, Jude was one of her pilots in Scuderia Dragonstar, but so were many other men. Could it be someone out there had got wind of his crush on her in the past? It had been an innocent thing, and of course he hadn't acted on it, seeing as she was unavailable to begin with.

She looked up the author's name again. Could this woman have heard gossip from one of Jude's confidants and turned it into tasteless fiction? A search in public records showed one pod pilot with such a name, as well as many planetside dwellers. The pod pilot was Amarrian, though. Surely such drivel could only come from bad Gallentean authors, no?

Even so, she checked the pilot's affiliation. Looking at the founder of her current corp. The name made her scowl even more, slanted grey eyes sparkling angrily. Cosmo Cyrano. You better have absolutely nothing to do with this, you little wretch.

But then she thought better. Speaking to Cosmo was an exercise in translation as it was, so uneducated was her speech. She couldn't possibly have contributed to anything literary, even something as bad as this book.

Sigh.

Then she noticed the search held more book titles. As she perused her scowl disappeared and she guffawed. With a guilty flush to her cheeks, she ordered a copy of Princess of Pator. She wondered if Elsebeth would laugh or chase her with guns blazing through the next race track if she asked her for an autograph.

Um...

It's late.

I was going to mine ice.

Ice is boring.

So I had a little accident.

Did I mention it's late?

Christmas

The winter holidays didn't much feel like holidays to me. In fact they passed me by entirely.

First there was the whole CEO thing. With Scavanger still tied up planetside and unable to keep a sharp eye on corp leadership, we all arrived at the decision that a new face was needed driving Dragonstar forward. With Scavanger's blessing and a majority vote, I was the one who took up the position.

This meant looking over the entire wallet, tracing the whereabouts of assets, shuffling corp offices around a little (is it just me or have office prices gone completely insane in some corners of the Federation? What's going on, there?) and it also meant getting some projects running and the employees working together for a goal once more.

Second came a lot of diplomatic talks with two other corporations looking to solidify some deals and some verbal agreements. This is still ongoing, but while now it's well on track, at the time there were a lot of emergency meetings and many small fires within Dragonstar that I, as brand new CEO, had to go around dousing.

Last but not least, one of the projects we got going was the manufacture of three Orcas - some for internal consumption, some for external sale. We did it ourselves, and proudly so. From mining every single mineral we needed (thanks in no small part to our team of explorers which kept finding us some really precious hidden spots at just the right times), to building every single part. We did it. Despite the lack of manpower, the true spirit of Dragonstar came up just like that and we did it. I felt so proud!

And yet I've never in my life spent so much time in a mining barge... They keep making fun of me. My ego is bruised.

So that's why this lovely winter-holidays-type picture of me caught me in an Iteron III hauling around ore that Feu was mining at a site nearby.



The ever cheerful Quin came over with an Interceptor armed with some three snowball launchers or so and brightened up my dull hauling job with a barrage of snowy glee. Oh, and she made fun of me for being in a slow ship, and flew circles around me at high speed. Speed fairy indeed.

It was the only snow I saw all winter long. With all the work and all the little fires to put out, I ended up not going planetside with my wife for some fun in the snow. Maybe next year.

Dragonstar Humour

"Real Racers fly Barges"

"Real Miners fly Ceptors"

Very cute, Kanunu. Very cute.

And no, I am most certainly not a real miner, even though I have often been seen in Retrievers lately and despite the fact I run my races in the Interceptor class. And I will never be a real miner, thankyouverymuch.

I just lend a hand when the corp needs it.

A Start

A blog...

I never thought I'd find myself adhering to the blog craze, and I certainly have never been the kind of person who could keep alive a diary of any sort. However I have been stuck in this writing project I've been toying with in my mind for ages and also I think this might be an interesting venue to post little tidbits about my gaming characters - and more specifically my Eve Online characters.

Therefor I hope this will be a place for a little bit of real-life rambling, a little bit of in-character writing... in English but also here and there (who knows?) the occasional venting in Portuguese.

Here's hoping the journey will be interesting.