That’s no moon…

Not EVE related, feel free to click away if you don’t need a rant about my health, attitude toward games and Royal Weddings.

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Still here?  Still reading? Well, then, here goes a rant.

I tend to keep myself busy and fit with gym, running, hiking and generally taking care of physical things around the house, be it sorting out the garden or cutting trees and chopping firewood.  For me to get up from my desk and walk / run a swift 5 mile with the dog etc is the high point of my day.  Winter was long, cold and miserable and I used the little Spring we had to its fullest, ramped up my exercise and eagerly awaited summer.

I started using a smartwatch in March. Garmin Vivoactive 3 to track my dog walks.  

 

My knees had been bothering me since October (hence no running) and I finally broke down and visited a local sports orthopedic surgeon. He ordered an MRI and reviewing it found that it was time to sharpen the blades and clean up a decent number of meniscus tears in my knees (both of them, why waste a good anesthesia).  Its no big deal, I have had done this (with the same doctor) in the past, its about 1 week to 10 days of moderate-pain recovery.  Then 10 years of peace and quiet.

Or so was the plan.  I go under in good spirits, wake up and notice a rather large brace on my left leg, nothing on my right.  Doc comes and explains to my addled brain that he opened up my left leg and found a rather large hole in the cartilage somewhere, likely from some nasty impact injury (could have been anything, really).

 

Its a moon! No, its the inside of my knee

He decided to clean out the floating “debris”, scrape the cartilage clean and drill into the bone to allow blood and stuff seep into the gap and re-build itself.

A nice clean hole in the cartilage. Some scraping tool for scale.

Holes! Now it really looks like a cratered moonscape

Instead of 10 days of recovery, it’ll be 6-8 weeks with brace, crutches and physio.  So, doc tells my drugged self this post surgery and looks all pleased with himself like my puppy dog when she returns a lump of frozen cat shit.  Wagging tail etc.  He wants to get patted on his head?  Bellyrub?  6-fucking weeks on crutches?  Christ, I know he means well and did the right thing but I want to slap him with a dead fish.

So, I am so grounded now that I can’t barely hop around the house.  An odd thing is also that there is no pain, none. Which is awesome (really is) but its also weirdly disconcerting.  I totally feel like an wimp now and am thoroughly bored with this nonsense.  The rest of my household thinks the same and has classified me as pathetic hypochondriac.

What a great time to play video games!  Well, no.  I discovered a long time ago that video games are only enjoyable when I am in a good mood and otherwise perfectly balanced.  When work is great, I exercise and life is perfect, I love playing EVE and other games. Escapism may work for some people, not for me.  When I am lashed to my sofa / chair for some dumb reason like this, I can’t get the patience to log in at all. Not even interested in talking with my corpmates on slack.  EVE literally does not feature for me at the moment.

So this was my rant and explanation why there isn’t any EVE-related tale from me.

In other news, Prince Harry married Meghan Markle and yes I watched the whole thing on YouTube, mostly for the scenery and the pageantry that nobody does as well as the the Brits.  Not a Limey myself but I always had respect for those in the Royal Family who try to use their privileged position to genuinely serve.  Harry spent 10 years in the Army including being deployed to Afghanistan, he is no slouch and Meghan seems to have her own head on her shoulders.  I wish them well for what its worth (not much).  But never underestimate the internet to tear things down and vomit green, disgusting bile over everything good.  At times like these I want to turn off the computer and run a few miles to get clean again.  Except, I can’t even walk this week.*

 

 

* and yes, many people are far worse off, I will walk / run again soon enough.    This post wasn’t a balanced reflection on life, the Universe and everything.  Its a vent for my frustration and happy biased.  Deal with it

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Pretty Explosions

Just what the title said.  Things in EVE are very pretty. Especially when they go “boom”.

Backstory: someone in my corp had found these structures vulnerable and organized a fleet to finish them.  We were in Sleipnirs and related boats and made short work of it. What was surprising (to me at least) was the sheer quantity of stuff that dropped.  I mean, freighters worth of PI material, ships of every class and fitting, ore, blueprints.  Since there was no opposition, one can just assume the entire corp left EVE or – much more likely – realized that mining in Delve is safer than HighSec or Wormholes and just wrote off the entire hole… Either way, fun night for us…

Athanor

Astrahus

Social Media as business model – free advice to CCP

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook graciously flew into Washington DC to visit a retirement home for ageing white men and explain to the residents how the interwebs works.  This was nice of Mark and he did a good job; those he couldn’t convince that Facebook is on the same level of social responsibility as Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama he will just have to buy later.  No, all booster-seat and water-sipping memes aside, his lecture was a total success and he must have left satisfied that his usual routine of apologies and vague promises of “transparency” will stall regulation of his empire industry for at least one more election cycle.  As his only concession, it is assumed that Facebook will offer some form of premium service where the consumer pays directly in exchange for data privacy.  For the company, this would be a great boon since they would receive this direct revenue in addition to revenue generated by selling the data on.  If found out, they would just send their CEO to DC again to apologize / bribe; a pretty good return of investment.

But we are here not to talk about Facebook but EVE Online, the only surviving Multiplayer Game where interactions between players actually matter.  EVE is made by the Icelandic firm “CCP” which has successfully built a company without any marketing whatsoever relying on their tribal customers to acquire more and more accounts. CCP has used the revenue to launch incredibly successful games like FPS, VR games and Vampire MMOs but fundamentally relies on generating revenue from its EVE players to sustain its business.  Unfortunately however, there are fewer and fewer players, even when we purchase more and more accounts.  The likely end-game for EVE are 4 US-players with questionable personal hygiene using their 30k accounts each to battle a Sino/Russian bot alliance flying weaponized Rorquals.  As long as CCP gets paid for accounts and not players, this is financially reasonable but as a social medial platform not satisfying.   Reddit’s /r/eve might dry out and of course that is where EVE is really played.

Salt

As both of my readers know, I don’t play EVE to actively upset or annoy other players.  The practice of doing so, deliberately harvesting tears (aka salt) as it is known is abhorrent to me.  The discussion about this is as old as the game itself and I am not going into it.  I said it before, I love EVE for the fact that you can choose to be a total asshole while not being one is also a choice.  Other games simply don’t have the game mechanic to really negatively impact another player.  Please, CCP, never dial that back.

So, whats this all about?  The other day I logged into the game ready for some interaction with my corp mates and look for trouble.  The (really) nice thing about NOMEX is that there are nearly always people online even if not hunting all the time.  Which means if I do what I do best (scout / tackle), I can have the cavalry called in within a few minutes.  And so I go out scouting down a C1 connection, not even bothering bringing my other character as rear guard.  If I find something with my Proteus, I’ll tackle it and my fleet mates will bail me out.

If it wasn’t for Real Life…

Edit This just in. A fast/furious little skirmish that started as a rapid gank on a Gila that ran one of the event sites and escalated when our target dropped a Bhaal plus many other things on us.  RIP my little Stratios, you will be missed replaced.  

 

As my last remaining reader knows, I moved to a new corp “Anomalous Existence” and am happy as a clam in this outfit. They are small enough to know all the guys and gals but big enough that stuff goes down all the time.  Unfortunately most of the times when I see a ping, I can’t log in for Real Life reasons.  I don’t mind too  much right now, as long as NOMEX doesn’t kick me out, I am happy where I am. My reduced online time however means that I have to scrap all things EVE extraneous like PvE, reading about EVE and of course blogging.

Expectations are met

My last post was about my move to NOMEX and what my expectations were.  I had hoped for a low-class WH PvP-centric corporation with minimal (asymptotically approaching zero) drama and lots of lots pew-pew.  I am delighted to report that all my expectations were met.  Just a look at yesterday’s killboard and you get a feeling that this is a corporation that’s going out and shoots “all the things”.

A short, sharp kick in the ass

Most of my remaining two readers will have realized that had the EVE Blues.  It was a combination of three things:

• Z3ro Return Mining, my ancestral home in EVE, the corp that I joined as a pod-pole 7 years ago, where I learned Wormhole flying and in which I found true friends is slowing down.  People age, families grow, recruitment is hard work and attrition has shrunk the corp to a few good friends with limited time online.  It just “happens”, there is no drama but as a game it wasn’t enjoyable for me.
• CCP made some wild design decisions that in fore- and hindsight have been disastrous and bit them in the ass. Rather than focusing on the diversity of players using the multitude of things to do in New Eden as their driver, they channeled all development and marketing activity into one thing and one thing only, Sov Nullsec.  It worked, thousands now log in only to experience a big fight with the entirely predictable result that the servers crash and people are disappointed.  I grew tired of being treated as third class paying customer and unsubbed 2 of my 3 accounts.
• I personally had changes in my life, good or bad but they didn’t allow for “regular” play.  Long, boring story, everyone has those phases, mine started in summer 2017.  Its only now that I have more of a balance and can re-engage in things that are not absolutely necessary to life (like computer games).

But sometimes, all it needs is a short, sharp kick in the ass to get motivation back.  I suddenly realized that I truly missed EVE and that I don’t have to stay with Z3ro.  I am allowed to leave. But where should I go?