Updates & Whatnots

Stay Frosty/ABA Black Ops
I haven't posted much this week for a very simple reason. I've made the decision to move forward with starting my own creative studio full-time and I've been busy working on building a new website, networking, and all the hundreds of other things that need done to make that happen. It has been an interesting journey these past two months. It started with a rich investor, some potentially incredible offers, my Wife taking a new and exciting position (which is going incredibly well), the end of the road for 14 years of horrible stress, and ends as it began - with me taking the plunge once more.

TLDR: It has been a busy week.

Last Saturday we joined in on Tovanis' anniversary celebration and managed to execute some hilarious Black Ops attempts along the way. Who knew you could jump a Phoenix from the Eve Gate all the way up thru Low Sec space about 20 jumps before finally getting it killed two jumps from our home system? Eve is so weird sometimes.

Fun was had. For our very first Black Ops we did surprisingly well. Lessons were learned and I think we'll be much better at it next time. We once jumped on a Drake at a Gate and lost a third of our bombers to gate guns. That was funny. We did end up catching him.

On Wednesday a few of us flew around Pure Blind with local fully operational again. It certainly does change things a bit, but generally didn't have a huge impact on our operations. The region was surprisingly busy compared to other weeks, so that's good news. We managed to have a few good fights, but nothing compared to the work we did together to capture a Kikimora. He was flying with two cloaky Tengus and a Retribution, so it took some positioning off the gates, some clever flying, and manipulation of warp distances to finally get him out alone away from his support. But it worked and there are few things as satisfying as killing a ship right in front of its support.  We even managed to grab the Retribution when it finally made it to the fight.

But the highlight of the week had to be earlier that day when I logged in to accept a contract and got pinged for a fleet immediately. Daniel, Kasal, and Fire had managed to probe down two ships running a site - a Dominix and an Orca. Not knowing anything about the situation I decided to jump into an old Raven I keep around, which I had recently re-fitted from Cruise to Rapid Heavies. We suspect that these two ships were being controlled by one person given the weird way they acted, with the Orca hanging around a bit longer than it should have. Either way, this Domi kill made my entire month. Then add in the Orca (which is rare enough in Low Sec) and that day got off on the right foot.
All of that happened within ten minutes of logging on.

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all you know I often do the dumbest things just for the fun of it. I'm the first to admit that I don't play Eve like most people. If the mood strikes me I'm as likely to put anything I fly into harms way, just for the chance to win a good fight, for the lols, or just to try something. It's that attitude that got me into a 1v1 with a RvB Thorax on a gate in my Jaguar. Thing is, I would have won that fight if it hadn't been third partied by an Ishkur. So I lost the Jaguar.
But, like all good stories, this one has a happy ending. Because Kasal and I made sure the Thorax didn't make it home.

One last story from this week. Sometimes you can be waiting on a plex gate in a Gila for your buddies to find a Vexor in the next system, when out of nowhere an Algos lands right on top of you. I guess this pilot hasn't learned the benefits of d-scanning yet. I don't enjoy killing ships grossly outclassed, but I also won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I have no idea why some people seem to find Eve difficult or boring. Mine isn't.