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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Elder Scrolls Online and other single player games

Both readers of this blog may recognize that I occasionally drift away from writing about EVE Online and venture into other games and genres. Never for long, no other game so far had the staying power with me but yes, I did write about World of Warcraft, Fallout 4, Planetside 2 and of course my anticipated disaster playing No Man’s Sky.  Likely quite a few others but those are the ones that I remember a little more.  Common to all these games is my lack of attachment, an “aloof” attitude, an unwillingness for me to get serious about the game, nothing compares to you, EVE Online in depth and complexity.  Case study Fallout 4.  I picked it up over the Thanksgiving Holidays and played it a ton. The captivating storyline, the excellent (in my opinion) combat, crafting and interaction system and the detailed post-apocalyptic, believable world drew me in.  Its an awesome game.  Last time I played? January 23rd according to Steam. Its not that I don’t like the game, I just “got it”, i.e. I understood how it works and where it will go eventually.   Sure, there are mods (which I downloaded), new questions, more villages to free etc but overall, I have all the content that I wanted – (discounted) money well spent.  In the future, I will likely go back and replay it in Survival Mode for the additional challenges but currently I see no need to continue.

Still my favorite companion

Backing the Fountain War

Calling EVE Online a “computer game” would similar to calling Facebook a photo sharing site.  Both statements are technically correct but they don’t do justice.  In fact, Facebook and EVE Online are both social media products in the broadest sense – with the crucial difference that Facebook’s core message is the importance of “me” whereas EVE Online’s message aims to be the value of “us”.

Yes, EVE Online is social experience for us players in-game and outside.  Like no other MMO (measured by percentage, not total number), it spawned blogs, podcasts, meetups, parties and – yes – fiction and lore.  We don’t see ourselves as “players”, we see ourselves as creators of stories set on the backdrop of a space simulator – even if the story is just our own, we touch and we are touched by tens of thousands of others like us.  Even you, the harmless industrialists built weapons of mass destruction that ended many other’s dreams.  And you, the professional AWOXER and harvester of tears force the rest of us to analyze our own moral stance toward the helpless, the newbros, the hapless.  EVE Online is a community like no other because it is under threat, not despite of it.  “EVE Is Dying” is our battle cry, not our swansong.

Windows 8 and EVE Online – Clash of the decades

I could not resist the Amazon.com offer of $69 for a (seemingly!) full installation of Windows 8 Pro.  My XP license is seriously ageing and Windows 7 is what I use at work, in the true Windows tradition, when it works, you forget that you have it.

Newbie Blogger Initiative – My 0.2 ISK

Newbie Blogger Initiative

The Newbie Blogger Initiative aims to help aspiring bloggers and I would like to quickly add my 0.02 ISK to the chorus of outstanding posts.

About Friendship….

Society is currently undergoing rather substantial transformations, the one I mean to think about today is “friendship” and what it means nowadays.  Maybe there are many blogs and scientific papers written about it but I never looked at those.  Not because of arrogance but because I abhor channel flipping.   I’d like to stay with my topic for a while and not have it “contaminated” by the wisdom and insights of others.

EVE Online Described

Seismic Stan asked to describe EVE Online, the MMORPG is currently use to think about the online world.  Needless to say that very well known and informed bloggers jumped to the challenge and described EVE as it appeared to them.  Jester of course delivered his trademark wall of text, after all, why say anything in 2 pages if 10 would do as well.  But Kudos to all who wrote and write since a reflection on what EVE Online is, would be in order after this summer of uncertainty.

Personally, I define EVE differently depending how I think about it.  To the one person who in RL knows I am playing it, I call it “that game I currently play”.  I deliberately use the term “game” so that the non-serious aspect comes through.  For myself, I define it as a Sci-Fi simulator.  And Sci-Fi for me is the ultimate laboratory for human behavior as it allows alteration of starting conditions and then tosses in the lab rats (players) to work out how this all plays out.  In EVE, leadership, friendship and (maybe?) enemies can be made under conditions otherwise not likely.

So rather than defining EVE for myself, I need to find out what it means to me and what I intend to do within its boundaries…

Thats it.  No wall of text, no deep description of game mechanics that EVE players already know and nobody else cares about (sorry Jester).  WoW players want their pink pony.  Everyone else is playing Starwars: the Old Republic (= WoW in space).