Hacking the Mish (4)

COF Brawl Round 2:  3 of our Hyperions dicked around with them, they dropped full armor fleet, we scrambled to respond

Fun little skirmish with Phoebe Freeport Republic via a Null connection.  Played kiting games for a while.  Got to see the new structure damage effects

What it feels like to be slung around by Command Destroyers like a fucking ragdoll.

LZHX Brawl #3 : met in neutral system between homes.  They brought Nid + Nestor + 3xBhaal + T3's.  We brought similar except with Guards.  Fight was slightly in our favor until 2 Bifrosts and 2 Sabres began warping our Guardian ball around (and me).  First engagement where we've seen them used effectively.  They're a game-changer.

Frostline Bling

Cait...so savage

BOS bringing the heat to some Raiders

Hacking the Mish (3)

Operation Frostline Sites -- Serpentis Gear and Quafe Zero

Failed Blops attempt in Null -- tackled Thanny, too far for bridge, settled on killing Tempest

Great fight with COF -- Saw the debut of the Bifrost in action

Jumped into Iso 5's home with Triage Chimera, outnumbered.  We lose a Curse and Chimera, and jump back as Hard Knocks warps in to third party

Also had LZHX in chain recently, it was time for us to meet them in neutral ground but our hole already had too much mass to go balls deep into our static.

SSC ganked 3 of our Rattlers, then tried to get us to fight their Cancer Loki/Mach Arty Kite fleet again...said fuck that.

Lost my Strat when we baited a few Polarized guys with a Scorpion in their home hole.  2stronk

Poor guy has his "bar" set up in the middle of nowhere, thinks he still runs a joint

Piper decides to have a heart-to-heart conversation standing in front of my wife's corpse.  I like her style.

Hacking the Mish (2)

Gank with Iso 5 via frig hole

Brought fight to Ixtab's home, they drop 5 caps after saying they don't want to fight our caps

Hacking the Mish

Frigate Safari scores some big game (BR)

Balls Deep in Sudden Collapse (BR)

Video -by me

Nestor Catch (BR1)

Nestor Catch (BR2)

LZHX

LZHX

Moros/Thanny Gank

SSC Skirmish

...

NoVac

No Vacancies had vacancies.

I've really been enjoying my time in NoVac.  It's refreshing to see a wormhole corp done right. Consistent activity, no one sitting in POS doing PI, people actively looking for fights and rolling boring chains, extremely efficient way of making isk, well established doctrines, and people willing to put (a lot of) isk on the line for fun.

After the first 5 days in the corp, I've taken part in C5 escalations, scouted for a Goonswarm Ishtar gank, made ~700M isk after dropping a couple bil on doctrine ships, took part in a few skirmishes with Sky Fighters, R3d Fire, and a couple other known WH entities, and was 10 minutes late for a big fight against Hard Knocks (still kicking myself...).  THAT is exactly what I joined NoVac for.

Here's a few screenshots and stories:

C5 escalations during the designated bearing time.

R3d Fire rolled into us while we were bearing and talked a whole bunch of shit after we responded with a large force.  They wanted us to scale down to fight them, but had a horrible attitude, and proceeded to shit in our pub channel.  So we entered their home with a full force and eventually rolled it shut in their face.

Aftermath of a home fight against HK.  Out-neuted and out-manned.  Hanging with the big boys though.  Awesome.

Aim High,
Smitty

System Highlight: Scolluzer

Introducing a new segment-- System Highlight.  I'm dealing with skills and assets in high sec atm, so I figured i'd thoroughly explore a random high sec system and see everything it has to offer.  Turned out to be pretty fun.  It's been a while since I looked closely at anything besides J-Space.

Scolluzer is a 0.8 security system in Gallente space.

First thing I noticed was a small mining fleet from a 7-person industrial corp called "Mani Corp", consisting of an Orca and 2 Hulks.  3/4 asteroid belts had been cleared and they were working on the last one.

There is one POS in system, active and owned by Hidden Agenda, a 200+ member corp in the Deep Space Engineering alliance.  

While researching the available industry facilities, I discovered that a couple are owned by an NPC corp called "X-Sense", which is part of the Jove Empire faction.  I didn't realize the Jovians had active corporations in known space.  Are they run by AI or something?  There is also a Jove Observatory with seekers in system.

I noticed a member of Dropbears in local who had participated in last weekend's defense of their home, Nova, against the QEX Russians eviction.  I've been following that fight on Reddit.

Only other consistent local members belonged to small-time indy corps.  But having 4 gates, there was quite a bit of traffic.

There was one signature, which turned out to be a C2 wormhole.  It had one active POS with a few ships in space, including a Chimera and active Stratios from the Vox Populi alliance.  After I exitted, I saw a Brave Newbies member enter in a Hound.  Based on his killboard, it looks like he hunts for unsuspecting wh miners.  Wish i had my flycatcher in system.

The only anomolie was a Serpentis Refuge combat site, which was eventually run by a Dominix.

Pretty amazing how much content a sleepy little indy high sec system can hold in an hour or two.

Aim High,

-Smitty

Free Agent

Today I freed myself from a dead corp and toxic community.  I managed to get out of there with my Domination Control Tower that has sentimental value to me-- I found the blueprint in a J-Space Data Site and built it myself, using it as my corp's Officer POS.  It's my pride and joy.

Smitty is officially a free agent.  I'm not sure where I want to go next, but I might wait until i'm done with my initial stage of pilot training coming up at the end of October, which lasts a month.  Don't want to join a corp and then have their first impression be me being gone for a month.

Over the course of the extraction from our home hole, I talked to a few wh corps/alliances, Low-Class, No Vacancies, and they were recruiting and offered me a spot.  I joined their public chats as potential candidates.

But I might want to try out Null-Sec.  Not sure yet.  

Anyway, enjoy some screenshots.

Steel and Ice 

 So much hauling.

 There she is -- being taken down in our Pulsar home.

 What do you call a water spout in the desert? Sand spout?

 Love the weather in Witcher 3. And sailing on the tiny ships.

[SPOILER] This is Keira Metz.  You fuck her and then kill her.  And that is when I realized that this is in fact a Witcher game.  Good stuff.

Aim High,

-Smitty

Story Time

Gather 'round, it's story time.  I was doing my usual chain scanning and got a chat invite from a random dude, Eki Jo.  He must have been cloaked up in our C3, saw me pass by in my Helios, poked some fun.  We talked for a while about his alliance, the EOL null connection, etc.  After I found the connection to his home, a C5 Wolf-Rayet, I decided to reship and poke around for a fight.  Came back with my Ishkur and he proposed an honor 1v1.  Of course I said yes.

He says he doesn't have a suitable ship, so he'll send one of his corp mates.  I wait 160+ km off their hole in the C3 waiting for this mystery challenger, and he (Conquest) comes in with a Garmur.  Well shit.  I say fuck it, I'll give it a try.  Kitey vs. Kitey.  Turns out I was able to kite the hell out of him with some micro-managing, get him down to 1/3 shield, he warps away once, puts a ":P" face in local, I respond with "TWO MEN ENTER ONE MAN LEAVES". Maybe this dude will harden the fuck up because this is THUNDERDOME .  We engage again, I almost break his shields, burn out my hardener and DC, am down to 2 more pastes, and the bitch warps back to hole.  I didn't think my point was necessary due to the THUNDERDOME nature, but I shouldn't have trusted him after he warped away once.  Oh well.

I tell Eki Jo to call him a bitch for me.  For fun, I engage Eki's Arazu, he goes back home, comes back with a polarized gun Brutix and blaps me.

Gained a space friend, and he pretty much invited us to his alliance, which I'll keep in mind.

Aim High,
-Smitty

Magnum Opus

Upgraded my graphics card and have been playing some awesome games.  Here's a little sampling, including some of my latest EVE adventures.

 Early Morning POCO Bashing

 J-Space is great

 Spectre Fleet Caracal Roam- Fight with Cruiser Crew

 Getting ready to drop isk on some T2 cruisers soon. Wormhole savings plan

Damn FTL is tough.  Made it to the flagship once, couldn't crack it. 

Mad Max -- in what used to be an underwater ocean reef.  Beautiful game. 

Witcher 3 -- incredible. Max settings (besides Nvidia Hairworks, but fuck that shit)

Beginnings

Smitty, Mallory, and Mayfield, the crew of The Kestrel, embark on their first ever mission...to deliver news of an enemy invasion across the galaxy.  Smitty orders the crew to use their FTL warp drive to jump into a neighboring system inside of a nebula.  Upon arrival, the crew sees readings of a teleporter being used, and having sensors blinded by the nebula, are unable to see what awaits them in the crew quarters.  Well, turns out it's 4 pirates who boarded the ship and Smitty and his entire crew get beaten like redheaded step children as they frantically run around the cabin.  gg, FTL, gg.  Nothing like a slap in the face after ur first jump to show you how awesome and unforgiving the game of FTL is.

My second life was better.  I made it through about 4 star clusters, then ran out of fuel.  I was forced to wait on the chance that someone would offer me aid.  Instead, someone aggressed me, and after I ran out of missiles to drop their shields, was thoroughly beaten.  As I accepted my fate and was on the verge of hull collapse, the aggressing pirate warped away, leaving half my ship on fire, and half my crew dead.  Opening airlocks solved the fire problem.  To repair the hull ruptures, my crew was forced to work without oxygen, luckily remedied by an intact med bay.  So now I was stuck with no fuel and no missiles.  I activated my distress beacon and waited again.  This time, a Slugman traveler stopped and offered me supplies; with one catch...do not offend him by negotiating.  Welp, I couldn't afford what he had to offer so I was forced to negotiate, turning him hostile, and ending my life.

FTL Faster Than Light is awesome.

I'm back on EVE, and finally have civilian internet (as opposed to tethering off my phone).  I'll have a quite a bit of free time over the next 6-8 months aside from the holiday.

As I take the reigns back as CEO, I can see I'll have to put in quite a bit of effort to get AI back to its prior activity levels.  Nevertheless, I've been settling back in and poking around J-Space the past few nights.  Jumping a ratting Gila, finding 6 faction data/relic sites in our C3 making 120mil, scouting for k-space entrances, trying to get faction warfare carebears to fight me...stuff like that.  But AI has quite a few connections that will prove to be content-generating, and isk generating which I'm looking forward to.  Such as a relationship with DURA LEXX, and our constant low sec relationship with ARMIL.  There are certainly things to look forward to.

I did the free upgrade to Windows 10 today, which did not go as expected.  Upon updating, my resolution and display setting was completely messed up, so I installed my GTX 670's latest driver.  After restarting, my system would begin the Windows startup, then revert to a black screen.  I found people with similar (but different) problems on troubleshooting threads, but could not find a fix.  I ended up re-installing the OS and wiping my drives clean...in hindsight, it was probably better this way.  Had a bunch of games sitting around on my drive that I'd never actually play, and this has forced me to try new ones.

I like Windows 10 a lot.  Definetely a good effort by Microsoft to cater to the desktop enthusiasts.  I've got a GTX 970 in the mail as well as 8 more Gigs of RAM to give my 3-year old setup a nice boost.  That way I can play Witcher 3 and all the great games coming out soon.

Catch you later.

Aim High,
Smitty

Science [Fiction]

"To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me"

-Isaac Newton

One of my favorite quotes about science, the pursuit of knowledge, and exploration.  No, I'm not back into EVE yet.  I've had the opportunity over the last month to do a looot of reading and listening, particularly reading science fiction and graphic novels and listening to Dr. Tyson as well as audio books.  I figure if you're an EVE fan, you've gotta enjoy some Sci-Fi and science.  So here's what I've read/listened to/am reading at the moment.  Behold, the Smitty Reading List of Enlightenment:

Children of Dune: the third book in the Dune series by Frank Herbert.  You've been living under a rock if you haven't at least heard of Dune.  THE Sci-Fi classic.  I won't say too much about it because just giving the premise would give some pretty big Dune Messiah spoilers.  But it is a nice change from the heaviness and complexity of Dune and Dune Messiah; I'm about 1/3 of the way in, and there's shorter chapters, more palace intrigue, and less insane mind-rattling monologues that came with Paul's prescience abilities.  It's a faster read, simple, and enjoyable...so far.

Leviathan Wakes:  the first book in the series called The Expanse, by James S.A. Corey (a pen name, who is actually two dudes, one of which worked closely with George R.R. Martin).  Leviathan Wakes qualifies as a space opera, meaning it's got some drama and a little too much useless dialogue and tears in parts for my liking.  But it's worth the read; it's a fast one.  Essentially, we've moved on to colonize pretty much our entire solar system-- you've got Earth and Mars as two military super-powers, then you've got the "Belters", people who grew up in the asteroid belt.  You've got the politics and racism among those groups, some cool small-scale space combat, some love affairs, and some shit that goes down beyond the scope of our solar systems (spoilers averted).  I'm about to start the second book in the series called Caliban's War, and it looks to involve conflict on the moons of Jupiter to say the least.  Should be fun.

Before Watchmen:  These are awesome prequel comics to Watchmen, what I consider the greatest graphic novel of all time and am not alone in thinking so.  Although Alan Moore was very vocally opposed to prequels, I think the various authors and artists did an awesome job fleshing out the background of the characters.  I found Ozymandias' life especially fascinating.  And the Comedian. Hell, it was all great.  Highly recommend.  And if you haven't read Watchmen yet, please go pick up a copy.  Actually I think B&N is having a DC Comics special later this week. DO IT.

V for Vendetta: Currently reading this, it's another well-known comic by Alan Moore.  Masked vigilante in dystopian England, wears a Guy Fawkes mask.  Good stuff.  I'm only a few episodes in.

StarTalk:  Dr. Tyson's radio show, which is now also on the National Geographic Channel.  I've caught up with them and they're great to listen to during workouts on SoundCloud.  Expand your horizonssssss 

The Great Courses: The Inexplicable Universe:  Check it out on Netflix or on Audible.com.  It's a series of 30 minute lectures by Dr. Tyson that will blow your mind.

30-Second Quantum Theory:  When Dr. Tyson gets to the quantum theory and ultimately the cosmology side of things, he sometime loses me.  So I decided to do some studying on it and this was on the bargain shelf at B&N.  Should help.

The Year's Best Science Fiction:  This is a compilation of 2014's best short sci-fi stories, edited by Caroner Dozois.  The first story is called The Fifth Dragon by Ian McDonald, it's about two lesbian lovers who work on the moon who face the decision of returning to Earth before their bones become too brittle or committing to moon life and building a life there.  It was very very good.  Looking forward to more stories.

Pride of  Baghdad:  spotted this graphic novel in B&N and the Arabic title caught my eye (K'breea Baghdad).  It's very interesting.  It's about a pride of lions who escape the Baghdad zoo after an air strike levels their area. I've just started getting into it, but I love the art and the setting.  Should be awesome.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: listened to the first story, A Study In Scarlet, which is the first story that introduces Watson and Holmes as characters and their first detective case as partners.  I was pleasantly surprised how the author managed to give an amusing history lesson concerning the founding of Salt Lake City, Utah, and the early corrupt Mormon church, which managed to have a connection with the London murder under investigation.  Looking forward to listening to more mysteries. By the way, it's an excellent audio book.  The voice actor is great, and listening to old English is a lottttt better than reading it.  Reading old English makes me want to kill myself, but this is great.

So that's about it.  I shouldn't comment on EVE happenings, because I've only been following Alliance mails and the like.  But it looks like we had an eviction attempt which could have turned out better, but Balcora's still home.  I'm looking forward to seeing the new patches.  Should be able to log in during the beginning of August.  Best case scenario.

Aim High and Question Everything,

=@= Smitty =@=