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 =@=

War Machine

You're sitting on 2,000 horsepower of Nitro-boosted war machine

The original Mad Max from 1979 is one of those movies that's so bad, it's hilarious.  The movie is literally just a gang of privatized cops chasing down a psychopathic motorcycle gang, which turns personal when Max's family gets involved.  I suppose the best thing that comes out of it is setting the scene of pre-apocalyptic earth, and how Max comes to live a nomadic life.

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior (simply called Road Warrior in the U.S.) is awesome.  The world's gone to shit after world wars over fossil fuels, leaving gangs of people fighting over resources and gasoline.  Max comes across a settlement with an oil drill and refinery being harassed by a raider gang.  Their mission is to move a tanker of gasoline to a coastal paradise.  It introduces a lot of things you'll see in Fury Road, like the sawed off shotgun, Max's muscle car, raiders strapping hostages to the front of their cars, and driving a tanker war rig.

Mad Max: Beyond ThunderDome is the third in the series and explores more of the settlements and residents of this post-apocalyptic wasteland and Max's nomadic travels.  If you've ever heard of the term ThunderDome to describe a 1v1 deathmatch, this is where it's from. "Two men enter, one man leaves"

As for the latest, Mad Max: Fury Road, go see it in theaters.  That Avengers movie is shit, see this one instead. 10/10

______________________

Last night we had a C3--Frigate hole C1 in our chain that proved to be active.  We fleeted up with ~5 Assault Frigs and SB's and tried to break a Talos/Exeq/Augorer trio that was controlling their B274.  We couldn't break the tank as expected but it was fun to fuck with them anyway.  The rest of the chain was quiet aside from a 5-day old Imicus that we killed.  So I got some logistics done in preparation for my hiatus---

Smitty's going to be taking a break from EVE for a couple months starting the next day or two. Uncle Sam's given me a nice chunk of leave as a reward for my 4 years at the Academy.  And it's a pretty good time for me to take a step back.  There's been a lot of clashing personalities, shitposting, lack of communication, and drama going on, which I'm allergic to.  Doctor-diagnosed and everything.  It's a hard life being allergic to drama and retards.  I've moved my non-essential isky assets out of J-space and set my queues for a long-haul.

Hopefully I'll be able to settle back into EVE with an actual internet connection (not phone tethering) and maybe even a new gaming rig.  My big white beauty, David (named after the Prometheus AI), is past 3 years old.  Still running on an Ivy Bridge i5 and GTX 670.  Gonna have to upgrade for all these great games out like Witcher 3, GTA V, and a game I especially like called "Running multiple EVE clients".  I've been doing some research into building a high end small form-factor PC.

=@= Smitty =@=

Dead-End Beatdown

One of our Officers got passed word of a possible small-scale capital fight that was to go down in a dead-end low sec system occupied by some new friends.  We flash formed up in armor BC's, BS's, and T3's, got in position, and stood by to assist.

Initially, the plan was to bait out a Russian Vindi from station and coax a carrier + dread drop, which we'd counter drop.  After the Russians didn't want to play, we engaged an Easily Excited Proteus who was in fact, cyno bait.  After we sent in more of our sub-cap fleet on top of the Proteus, they dropped 3x Thanny's, Phoenix, and Archon.  We retreated to station to prepare a counter drop while our Archon pilot hero tanked the shit out them.  We warped in another Archon + Moros and the rest of our sub-caps,

and the rest is history

EDIT: Video

It's safe to say they weren't expecting a counter drop, they pulled out, and we caught some of their shinies.

Screenshots:

=@= Smitty =@=

Deception

I've been reading more Sun Tzu's Art of War.  I still haven't made it past his first chapter "Laying Plans" because I've been meticulously reading and researching the introduction, background, and commentary.  Having studied at a military academy, I've been through multiple Military Strategic Studies courses, but Art of War always comes to mind before anything else.

A certain passage really hits the nail on the head pertaining to EVE. 

"All warfare is based on deception.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him.  If he is in superior strength, evade him.

If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them.

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere (before) the battle is fought...Thus do many calculations lead to victory."

This is why I don't take it personally when people spy and awox.  Although I may call them fuckbois when we get blue-balled, I respect their use of deception and guerrilla tactics to suck our resources. Another thing they have done well is take advantage of our ally's "choleric temper".  

J-Space is full of deception.  When you're able to attack someone, you try to appear unable by utilizing POS location, ship traits, scanning alts, and the limitations of d-scan.

Bait. Simple enough.

If your neighbor is in superior strength, roll that hole.

"Making calculations in our temple" means to me experimenting with fleet comps.  Playing with EFT and Pyfa.  Mastering wormhole mechanics.  Gathering intel and utilizing Tripwire.  Being willing to scan.  Personally, I enjoy scanning down chains and observing active wormholers, sitting 100km off their POS watching them re-ship, making permanent notes in Tripwire about their activity, weighing the possibilities of catching them or inviting a fight. Fun stuff.

________

If you haven't seen the new Mad Max movie, you should.  Imagine the movie Waterworld, except it's the desert instead of the ocean.  Imagine the Fallout New Vegas setting, with the factions battling over water and gasoline in custom-made muscle cars with weapons.  Tom Hardy is badass as expected, and Charlize Theron is smokin' as expected.

And if you haven't checked out Kerbal Space Program recently, they're out of Alpha and 1.0 has been released.  I've been playing the campaign and it's been satisfyingly difficult.  I'm currently trying to either send a mission to the ice caps of Kerbin for a soil sample or go to the mun.  I'm in need of science points, but the parts limit of 30 imposed by my vehicle assembly building is making it difficult for me.  And I can't upgrade unless I get more money...but my only active contract is achieving 2.5 km/s speed, which I imagine will be done in a nice elliptical orbit.

Zaqq's Talos Roam vid (boring, but fit is cool)

HK hits some Goons

Aim High,

-Smitty