Birthday!

It was my birthday yesterday, and I am old.

It was a pretty quiet day. Taught some martial arts, worked, and went home to spend some time with the family. They made a special Pork Chop dinner with potatoes and broccoli, and a delicious Texas Sheet Cake dessert.

For presents, as money is tight these days, I got modest gifts. A batch of homemade Haystack cookies from one son, a picture from another, and a paper boat from the third. My wife got me two Magic the Gathering Boosters, power/toughness dice, and a playmat.

In the boosters the rares were Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths which is a decent Blue-Black gold card, and a Black Gravebreaker Lamia which is only good if I get a deck that cares about things in the graveyard.

One of the boosters also had the pretty alternate art Renata, Called to the Hunt which I really like.

Overall a good day for an old man like me.

Year 11

When I wasn't paying attention earlier this month, my 11th EVE birthday came and went. Of that decade plus one time frame, I've been in Aideron Robotics for over 4.5 years.

Wow. Time flies when you're having fun.

In other news, Federation Uprising got its alliance icon approved and put into game.

Nice.

Ten Years

This day ten years ago I downloaded EVE Online and created Kirith Kodachi and began my two week trial.

Stolen from Kokatu

I remember the first time I heard about EVE it was from a friend describing how he was in a stealth bomber hunting an industrial ship in an asteroid belt. The target got away, but his enthusiasm was contagious and I read up on the internet about this space game. When I saw the picture of the Caldari Wyvern mothership I knew I had to try it out.

I almost didn't survive those first two weeks, but my friend saved me from high sec missions and I realzied that "doing things with others" was the secret sauce to this game. I didn't start writing about EVE on my blog until the beginning of October when I recorded:

3) EvE. I admit it, I'm right damn hooked. So hooked that this blog is now going to see some EvE blogging along with the warhammer stuff. Its my gaming blog after all, its just been that warhammer was my main fix.

Sigh. I decided to start posting my EvE ramblings here because I noticed today that on a corp forum board I am part of I amassed 48 posts in less than a month, putting me in fourth place of the most posts. First has only 99 and he's been on since June 16th. I am sick, sick, sick.

I started EvE after many weeks of waffling and browsing the web for info on it. What finally convinced me to join was the method of increasing your "level" by learning skill points. Basically, you set a skill to train and it takes a set amount of time based on your attributes and the skill in question. This training even occurs when you are offline so I can get a more powerful character without playing constantly. The lower time commitment required to get into the game sold me and I love it.

I started on Sept 9 and followed the tutorial over a couple sessions. It took about 2 hours to complete everything the tutorial had to show but it was so worth it. By the time the tutorial was finished I was comfortable enough to set out on my own. Being a Caldari pilot my first non-newb ship was a Heron which I later realized was a mistake. The Heron is more for electronic warfare and not straight up fighting, but I didn't know that. I died after a few missions in it. I upgraded to a Merlin frigate which is much better suited to fighting and I had some success in it. After about 10 days, I was ready to join some friends like Adam out in the low security (low sec) space, home of pirates and outlaws. Woot.

Adam flew out to meet me on the edge of high sec space and I packed up my meager belonging and entered the unknown. Many jumps later, I was secure in the headquarters of the Interstellar Privateers of Res Communis, aka IPoRC. The gents there helped me outfit my Merlin for real combat and my training began.

Over the next week I developed my skills and ratted ("to rat" means to hunt NPC pirates) while building up the skills to fly a cruiser. Meanwhile our corporation (aka a clan) got involved into a war and moved our headquarters into the warzone. This past Sunday night was the last convoy that got my stuff safely installed in the new HQ in Murethand system. After that I took off to our second base in a system called 9GYL so I could build up some capital by ratting in my brand new Caracal cruiser, outfitted with Heavy Missiles and an awesome shield.

That's where I am now and its going well. This morning I was on for 30 minutes and got to kill some rats (NPC Pirates) with two allies from other corps and earned about 2 million ISK (ISK = EvE money). Nice! I was able to pay off my debt to the corp for the two Caracals they provided me with.

I ran missions in a Herron, of all things.

As you can see, within a month of starting I was in low sec and null sec (yay Syndicate) and PvPing and having fun and that would set a pattern that I maintained for 10 years to today (no breaks) and for the foreseeable future.

I look forward to the next decade of playing EVE.

8 Years

On October 3rd 2006 I had a post that included my first ramblings about EVE:

3) EvE. I admit it, I'm right damn hooked. So hooked that this blog is now going to see some EvE blogging along with the warhammer stuff. Its my gaming blog after all, its just been that warhammer was my main fix.

Sigh. I decided to start posting my EvE ramblings here because I noticed today that on a corp forum board I am part of I amassed 48 posts in less than a month, putting me in fourth place of the most posts. First has only 99 and he's been on since June 16th. I am sick, sick, sick.

I started EvE after many weeks of waffling and browsing the web for info on it. What finally convinced me to join was the method of increasing your "level" by learning skill points. Basically, you set a skill to train and it takes a set amount of time based on your attributes and the skill in question. This training even occurs when you are offline so I can get a more powerful character without playing constantly. The lower time commitment required to get into the game sold me and I love it.

I started on Sept 9 and followed the tutorial over a couple sessions. It took about 2 hours to complete everything the tutorial had to show but it was so worth it. By the time the tutorial was finished I was comfortable enough to set out on my own. Being a Caldari pilot my first non-newb ship was a Heron which I later realized was a mistake. The Heron is more for electronic warfare and not straight up fighting, but I didn't know that. I died after a few missions in it. I upgraded to a Merlin frigate which is much better suited to fighting and I had some success in it. After about 10 days, I was ready to join some friends like Adam out in the low security (low sec) space, home of pirates and outlaws. Woot.

Adam flew out to meet me on the edge of high sec space and I packed up my meager belonging and entered the unknown. Many jumps later, I was secure in the headquarters of the Interstellar Privateers of Res Communis, aka IPoRC. The gents there helped me outfit my Merlin for real combat and my training began.

Over the next week I developed my skills and ratted ("to rat" means to hunt NPC pirates) while building up the skills to fly a cruiser. Meanwhile our corporation (aka a clan) got involved into a war and moved our headquarters into the warzone. This past Sunday night was the last convoy that got my stuff safely installed in the new HQ in Murethand system. After that I took off to our second base in a system called 9GYL so I could build up some capital by ratting in my brand new Caracal cruiser, outfitted with Heavy Missiles and an awesome shield.

That's where I am now and its going well. This morning I was on for 30 minutes and got to kill some rats (NPC Pirates) with two allies from other corps and earned about 2 million ISK (ISK = EvE money). Nice! I was able to pay off my debt to the corp for the two Caracals they provided me with.

Eight years ago today, Sept 9, 2006, I started EVE Online. The more things change, the more they stay the same.