June « 2009 « Our EvE

Transfer of Power

After several abortive and/or unsuccessful attempt to get all of our stuff moved in to our new little circle of space that we are calling home, one of our most adventurous combat pilots found a wormhole. As Letrange mentioned recently, sometimes the best place to look is in the wormholes that connect you to other wormhole systems.

It was only 6 jumps from where we started.
It was in high security space.
It had a local station.

As we’re quickly learning, there were things that obviously needed to be weighed in the balance, namely:

The high-sec wormhole had less than four hours of life.
The high-sec wormhole was over half depleted due to some other group exploring it.
The only ships we had to move stuff was an Iteron Mark IV and an aging Iteron Mark I.

So at approximately 18,000 m³ between us per trip we started taking bites out of the supplies we wanted. The modules our pilots had been requesting to refit with for encountering sleepers was fairly easy to fit. The real challenge was definitely the defensive tower arrays that had not made it in the first round.

After five or six trips, our other non-industrial, combat-oriented pilot had to head out and I decided to make as many more trips as I could. I managed about five more before the wormhole decided that it has been awake long enough and in a final surge, expunged the last of its cosmic energy.

This time though, I was on the unknown side and headed toward our tower.

To Do and Too Done

I recently read somewhere that the average to-do list survives unchanged for 22 minutes once begun. It takes that long for either something in the universe around you to change or your perception of it. It took us that long to realize that the process of moving into our little pocket of wormhole space was not going according to plan.

The tower was up and some of the arrays were up and ready. Most of the pilots had been able to take their primary ships through and a few of the secondary/utility hulls. The wormhole had crashed and many supplies where still not in system. Immediate prepartions went into place to locate additional insertion points. The supply lists were updated to include additional items

The next insertion point was two jumps into Amarr low security, but relatively close and uninhabited. The preparation to move was made and scouts organized. A little bit of dancing with an Onyx delayed the process a bit, but eventually we were ready to for the second insertion. Due to our relative inexperience with wormholes, we had forgot to assess the mass available in the new wormhole and were ultimately unable to get our ships through.

About this time, Mr. Onyx decided to come back with some of his friends and bring our endeavors to a halt for the moment. Small ship pilots were sent on through with what supplies they could carry and the Charon was docked up to wait for a less populated time to return to high security space.

With some frantic searching, directional scanning and self-scouting, the Charon was firmly back in high-sec.

Down the Rabbit’s Hole

And so it begins…

We’ve gathered all the fuel, most all of the supplies and we’ve got a possible wormhole scanned down. It’s a gentle Class 2 system with several signatures ready to process and not too big. We’re loading the ships and I’m out making bookmarks in the new system to prep for everyone being there.

Then a few minutes later I’m back with an Orca load full of fuel and tower. After anchoring the tower and getting it online, I get the ship arrays to anchoring and head back to bring in the rest of the supplies and escort the rest of the cohort in. We all meet at the known space side of the hole and prepare to jump. One, two, three and then me.

Except, the wormhole collapsed! No! No! NO! fortunately the ones that are through have some supplies and aren’t incapable of protecting themselves, but it is going to make it a bit harder to really get started. More to come later.

My Inner Self

I found myself mining some ice to fuel our wormhole tower. As it was an off-peak time, there wasn’t anyone else from the corporation, so I was flying back and forth. The Hulk can hold three cycles with the cargo optimization rigs, so every 13 minutes or so I would make the round trip.

As I was getting several dock/un-dock cycles, I was able to catch one of the persistent display issues I’ve been having with my camera drones. A couple of them seem to have gone rogue and I get some very odd views. The net result was the following picture:

The effect is more interesting that upsetting. Any adjustments to the cameras’ vector, and they immediately self correct.

A Monumental Decision

I’ve decided to take the plunge and jump on the wormhole bandwagon. Several corp-mates and I are going to try to make a go of it and see if we can’t make some isk, have some fun, shoot some Sleepers and generally do some things we haven’t done before.

We planning to take a tower, fuel, ships, modules and ammo with us to see what all we can find. We’re still working on what exactly that will all look like when we actually jump through. I’ll try to post some of what we’re taking and why.

[M]Ore for the Masses

I’ve updated the ore-values-by-jetcan listing on the left sidebar. These values reflect relatively current buy-weighted, market rates for the refined products, assuming a 100% rate of refine and 0% taxes. The relative distance to market is not compared, nor are low-sec regions included. I realize again that this doesn’t fit everyone’s needs, nor does it take into account the value of Omber/Kernite on contract for mission runners. That said, it does offer a quick metric to see how profitable a certain ore is/isn’t going to be. I tend to just hit a belt or a deadspace site and work on everything from Veldspar on down. To each his own.

I also want to take this time to remind all of my industrial friends that CCP has pretty much stolen the old Doritos slogan, “Mine all you want, we’ll make more.”

I’m Not Catching Up

I don’t have all my ducks in a row. If I did, this wouldn’t be only second notice after a big dry spell. I’m trying to get caught up and re-arrange a few things. In the midst of all of this, I think I have determined what caused the previous communications outage.

Sure there was the tragic loss of hardware, resulting in an inability to connect to the interweb. Sure there were a lot of changes going on around me. I think that the real reason is much more insidious. As I looked back over some of the last pages that I had written and the information I had disseminated, one particular piece stood out. I mentioned something about trying to get caught up.

What was I thinking? More about that later. First a look at some possible methods things could have come to the horrible state that I found them in.

Had I become so cavalier with my time that I felt it necessary to provoke that God the Amarrian Cape Covered Corps keep babbling about [Just kidding Empress Jamyl. Don't suicide bomb my Hulk.]. I only meant that I intended to catch up. I in no way meant that I had it easy and needed a strong dose of hardship to bring me back to reality.

Perhaps I had pissed off the pragmatic capitalist pigs, er, Caldari. They knew I was beginning to get into a swing with my medium hybrid ammo store. It could have just been a case of warranted market pvp that resulted in my whole system of work getting screwed up completely. I was only making an average of 300-500,000 isk per day, which is hardly worth a kingdom.

I really didn’t have the Gallente or Minmatar on the radar. Mayhap it was just that little slight of attention that warranted there subtle interference. They could have always just let things be as I fully intended to sell them hybrid and projectile ammo too.

Regardless of the method, the reason was always the same. I had tempted fate and destiny had rained down ruin and distruction. Well pain and suffering. Well really just inactivity and boredom. I danced with destiny and she trampled all over my tulips before passing out drunk in my ship maintenance bay, obscenely blocking the airlock safety sensor. I’m to blame.

If you got this far, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get caught up. I will always be behind.

Je suis le ténébreux,- le Veuf, – l’inconsolé,
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie:
Ma seule étoile est morte, et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Disconnected, Disconcerted and Discombobulated [OOC]

It’s been a fairly long time since I have managed to communicate anything even remotely resembling a post. I apologize to those of you dropped by earlier, expecting to find something new, only to find the same old missives from before. In the hiatus, I had the great affliction of watching my laptop die a horrible death to multiple internal system failure [hard drive sector errors, screen backlight and cable, inverter board, graphics card, DVD drive failures].

Then at approximately the same time, my 3G modem decided to start acting up. This killed any thoughts of actually seeing the internet from home and abroad as well as piloting any spaceships. I was able to eventually get one of the office computers configured to run EVE, but couldn’t do much more than check orders and run Science/Industry jobs.

It’s become painfully apparent that I was entirely too dependant upon my laptop for getting any of my day-to-day tasks completed. I felt awash in the ocean of reality with out a life-perserver to keep me afloat. Information that I could normally file away and utilise was piling up, flowing through cracks and threatening to break down the dam of consciousness.

Maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to get back to something more approximating a regular schedule. Though, I must forewarn, there is a job change and a move to a new place on the immediate horizon [end of the month].

Our EvE

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