Did A Stoopid

In my humble opinion, if you are going to talk about how awesome you are, how cool your gang is, how important fits and tactics are, how much you hate WCS, and go around giving advice on how to play Eve - you should own up to the flip side of all that awesome - how stoopid you can be.

Eve is a game that only continues to get more and more complex. (Which is another issue I'd like to talk about soon.) And as such it often requires insane levels of concentration, knowledge and ability. As with anything that demands such talents, the opportunity is rife for failure. Derps of magnitude.

In my seven years of playing Eve I've been killed in space by getting stuck on Asteroids, by my Cat jumping on my keyboard, by my Mouse battery dying at the worst possible time, by children fighting, by a UPS delivery, and a dozen more distractions of life. These, along with game failures (lag, modules not activating, and other technical issues) are beyond our control. These are the acts of nature itself, there is nothing we can do about them. Take them in stride and move along to the next adventure.

There is another class however. A class beyond natural acts of real life distractions, or technical issues involving mice running in server rooms - a class without class. The totally stoopid. A failure of the mind, body and spirit. A moment when you have no one to blame but yourself. And while I've often been accused of blaming my derps on other things, the truth is I've always taken responsibility for exactly what happened. This blog is full of examples. You have to take responsibility for the bad if you are going to take responsibility for the good.

Yesterday there was an Ishtar in a large plex. We had three Cruisers available, I was in a RL Caracal. We also had a Ruppie and a Stabber around. Local was rather full and unknown, due to the local Incursion, traffic had been inconsistent and difficult to predict for days. So the idea was to not-overly commit. Poke around at it and see if anything came to help. Easy enough. The Caracal is the perfect ship for that job. It was clear from the beginning of the engagement that the Ishtar had links running. His speed gave him away. I must stop here and mention that I am in no danger from the Ishtar, despite his Geckos, I have the distance and speed advantage.

Eventually it becomes obvious that we should pull away. I check my distance, align out to the Sun and initiate warp. And here is when stoopid comes and calls me away. I completely and totally STOP THINKING about it, my mind goes right into one of several on-going convos and totally forgets about the things happening in space. (I typically have multiple convos and blinking channels going on at all times, that is no excuse, just the way things are.) In the meantime, the Ishtar (smartly) has burned straight at me and gotten web/scram on me. By the time I am jolted back to space (a span of only a few seconds) it is already too late. My fate is sealed.

As often happens at times like these the thought of quitting skips across my mind. I mean seriously. All that thought, planning, experience, knowledge, and ability for what? I'm joking here by the way. Yes the thought does cross my mind, but it is not a serious thought. It is only a normal human reaction to being caught with your pants down. What do you know? I'm only human after all.

As are we all. Stoopid happens. We can try to the best of our ability to make it happen less often, but eventually it will get you.

So what stoopid things have you done lately? Feel free to share.

=============================

While you are thinking about it, enjoy the latest video from Joffy Aulx-Gao.