FINISHED!!

So yesterday I finally gave myself a good swift kick in the behind and spent the numerous hours finishing my move from my old corporation's headquarters to the new corporation's staging area. It became perhaps a necessity to do it as we've just been war dec'd. I swear. Do war dec's really happen this often?? Or am I just that unlucky. I mean...what? This will be my third war dec experience in the roughly 3 or 4 months I've been a pilot. I mean, I can understand it if I was living in nullsec. Wars happen all the time down there, or so I hear. But in High Sec?

I don't know. Either way it appears to be another band of misfits called Live or Let Die that just want to get what they probably believe to be some easy kills. Silly boys. Trix are for kids. But with this corp....we're willing to play. And we've got some pretty, fun toys to bring into the game.
Plus it will give all of us a chance to see what our corp is made of as a whole. Unfortunately, with me being on a different sleep cycle than most of them, I have a good feeling I'm going to miss a large majority of the fleet action. Ah well....both myself personally and my protege still need some more training to be what I'd consider up to par for these sort of engagements. But I wouldn't underestimate my protege either. She can already pack a pretty serious punch when needed.

Either way, with all my gear now out of the area where we believe they operate quite regularly, I shouldn't have too much problems.

On the note of moving all my stuff...I really gotta open my mouth more and ask for help. I'm such a loner sometimes, and stubborn as well in asking people for favors. Last night, a corp mate, Frank, who also came over from the old alliance, helped me out significantly with his freighter. Saved me what would have been three more round trips consisting of nearly 40 jumps per round trip, to move the last remaining ships and some gear.

So now that the weekend is here and everything is staged and ready to be moved to the corporation's HQ, it means I have lots of time to go out and play. I was planning on doing a bit of mining to fill the pocket book a bit more as I will be needing it when the time comes to buy the Hulk...instead, maybe I'll just send the protege out for a little solo hunting in the low sec regions around the new HQ and see what things are like there. Hopefully lots of pirates to kill. But of course, I need to tie a string around my finger so I can remember to go visit with Kieran and hopefully make it to her and her business partners store's debut fashion show. Guess I better dig around the hanger and find that old formal jacket...

-ML-

Completely Uneventful

I haven't gotten to spend too much time lately in the ship as paperwork and other non-piloting activities have consumed my time. I've been trying to make regular visits to see my "partner", Kieran, planetside on a more regular occasion to avoid being berated for coming by so rarely. I'm actually really impressed with all that she's accomplished with her budding jewelry business. Unfortunately, I don't think she fully agrees with me that it was good of me to be away so much, otherwise she wouldn't be where she is today if I was around all the time. Ah well...women never do listen to us guys anyways...

As for logging flight time, most of its been transporting gear from one station to the other. A very tedious task but one that will benefit me in the long run. Especially when most of my stuff would be 15 jumps away otherwise. I sold off or reprocessed the stuff I could easily afford to buy later and other trash I'd picked up throughout time that I'd likely never use. It's amazing really what you find when you look around your own hangers. The most time consuming aspect has been in the movement of ships. My mammoth class hauler, even with as much cargo capacity as it has, still struggles at carrying more than one or two ships. And sometimes, with the hauler being as slow as it is, i can almost make two round trips faster in my pod alone than one trip in the hauler. It also doesn't help as well that some of the ships are insured and repackaging them would nullify my insurance contract. Oh well. It'll be done soon enough.

In other aspects, I've found one minor problem with the new corporation. And I repeat its just a minor thing because I'm actually seeing it as a bit of a positive too. I hopped on the comms last night when I dropped by the hanger to make sure all my business was still in order and took notice of who was online. Surprisingly, not a single soul. Doh! I didn't take into account that most of my new corporation is on different sleep cycles than myself. When that realization dawned on me, i had a moment where I questioned whether or not I'd made the right decision in joining up. But then, as per my usual, I began to see a brighter side to it.

It meant I had the absolute freedom to handle personal business more regularly without the normal pressures of corporate responsibilities. Sure, I work for them and will do what I can for the intent of building the corp to make it even stronger...but at the same time, I will have the luxury of doing my own thing as well. Of course my protege is always on the same time frame as me but it will give her the ability to run missions freely for her agents as well as force her to get out and get comfortable with doing a little solo hunting in lowsec.

So in the end, as I said, I still feel this was a good decision.

-ML-

Trouble and changes

So I decided to go out with some friends the other evening planet side in Jita and have a few drinks. Really didn't drink that much but when I left the little bar we were at, a local concord officer observed us leaving and taking off in our vehicle. Needless to say that although I passed the field sobriety test with flying colors, i failed the breathalyzer and got to spend a night in jail. So I guess this means I'm grounded from driving a planet side vehicle for a short while. However, they have no jurisdiction to ground me from flying my ship for an infraction in a terrain vessel. Thank god...

Anyways, on to the more important stuff!

I left my corporation.

Yep, I said and I did it. I had a conversation the other evening with an alliance mate and we both came to the conclusion that things within the alliance were falling apart. Piece by fragile piece. So perhaps it was time to move on. Fortunately, my alliance mate had already done his research and found a great corporation looking for some fresh faces. They are all very heavily experienced pilots from which I'm sure I'll learn a lot from. They also own a bit of space in nullsec, which i will soon be going to see, so that is definitely some added value to this new corporation as well. In the meantime I've been gathering up all my and my protege's stuff and moving it to the designated station from which one of the corp members will transfer via, I believe, a jump freighter. I'm most likely just going to move a few of my rifters, some gear for them, and maybe a couple other ships. I'll most likely leave the Retriever behind in high sec as one, I'm not sure it would hold up well against nullsec rats and two, I'm really only a few days away from being able to pilot a hulk class exhumer. The hulk is a much sturdier mining ship and should do fine against any rats that come into the belts where I would be mining. For my protege, I will be bringing her vexor, thorax, a couple frigates and any necessary fittings for them as well.

I won't deny I feel a bit bad about leaving my now former corporation. So much so to where i just left without even saying a word to anyone. Figured it'd just be better that way. I do however owe an apology to one of my planet side friends because with this move to a new corp, I had to spend a large amount of time gathering gear, selling what i don't need, buying what I do, as well as showing support to the new corp by attending and participating in the frigate tournament we had this past weekend. (which by the way was a lot of fun though i lost my 1 on 1 match...damn nos, didn't see that coming... and was the first to be called primary by the other team in the 4 on 4 match we did at the end.)

So yeah....definitely been a long weekend.

-ML-

Eve Rollercoaster

So just when you think things are finally beginning to settle back down in a nice, steady routine, the gods just seem to love ripping that back out from under you.

We've had an upset in our Alliance where the two top people of the Alliance it seems have decided to turn in their pilots license. Or at least I know the one is but the other just sort of went AWOL. Sad really because I rather enjoyed their company but as I'm already finding out, so be it with the life and death of corporations in the depths of Eve space. There's a possibility, of which I haven't heard the answer yet, that the current Alliance CEO, one of the two that are leaving, has said he intends to maintain his position and take the alliance down with him. With that in mind, there has been talk of the corporations leaving the current Alliance and forming a new one. Personally, I'm all for option number two. I'm thinking if this current alliance CEO does indeed intend to take the alliance down with him, instead of everyone forming a new alliance, why not just consolidate into one Corporation. I've already got the support of two corporate heads, the CEO of my corp and the soon to be CEO of the another Corp. Now I just need to see if I can convince the remaining corporations. It might be a bit complicated in determining who to be in what position since most of them would be used to being the CEO's of their individual corporations, but if run properly, they would all have equal say and the person put in the position of CEO would really be nothing more than a sort of referee. I personally even have in mind, by looking at the professions most of the various CEO's focus on and seem to be most knowledgeable in, what positions would be most suitable for each person.

So the downfalls are yes, most would no longer hold the pretty little title of "CEO" or "XO" or whatever other title they have, but when the efforts of numerous individual corps are brought together into one large Corp, that would by the way make it more capable of interaction between the various job fields, I think eventually it would make a much smoother operation than it is currently. So I think I may just go on a crusade to see if I can influence the powers that be to make it happen. No telling what will happen.

In other life news, my protege has really been doing well for herself. She just recently received her first assignment from what capsuleers refer to as a level 2 agent. To be quite honest, it didn't go so well. She's currently piloting a Vexor class cruiser as well as a Thorax cruiser. She's capable right now of piloting a battlecruiser, either a Myrmidon or a Brutix, but her knowledge in armor repair, energy management and gunnery systems isn't quite up to par to properly fly it yet so I haven't gone through the trouble of purchasing one for her. By the way, yes, if you hadn't already figured out, she is Gallante. She was originally trained in a Gallante school and so I've chosen to keep her focused on flying Gallante ships. She's already becoming quite adapt at using drones, something Gallanteans are known for.

Besides that she's also managed to get her first kill mail. I've been sending her off with the other combat pilots to go hunting in low sec. Gives her a chance to get a feel for how things work as well as test her skills and equipment against other capsuleer pilots. I chose to outfit her in a Catalyst destroyer with tech2 small blasters and some signal amplifiers. Gotta admit for a small ship, that thing had some serious damage output. And I say "had" because although she annihilated an arbitrator cruiser, she ended up getting podded herself by the other cruisers that warped in to help their friend while her own fleet mates had to bug out. They didn't realize she was warp scrambled and by the time they could sort out who was still being engaged and reenter warp to assist, her ship was vaporized.

All in all though, it was a good experience and one that I'm sure will follow with many more.

-ML-

Perusing the Pilot's Logs

So there are a number of pilot logs floating around the interweb, some of which I've been following quite regularly. It's just a tad bit sad to see that a large majority of them seem to be pirates mostly but there is the occasional so-called 'carebears' telling recording their experiences as well. However, in reading the pirates' logs, one can almost start to admire them and their work and experiences. I won't deny that at times the idea of turning pirate has crossed my mind but with my training having been so extensively focused on mining and industrial, I would be nothing more than cannon fodder in the harsh depths of low-sec space. Yes, on occasion, I have been known to go hunting with the combat pilots within my alliance but for anybody that knows me or even reads my logs, I think it's quite apparent that I'm really just along for the thrills than being an actual, crucial part of any fleet ops. It's for this reason why I've taken under my wing the combat pilot I'd mentioned in a previous log. By training and directing her and financially supporting her endeavors, I feel it will, in a way, give me the ability to be more actively involved in combat patrols.

But anyways, I'm getting off the topic I wanted to mention that had me sitting down to write this entry.

There's a couple of entries made by other pilots that have really stood out to me. The first one was written by a pilot going by the name of Flashfresh. If you're interested in an excellent read, check out this log in particular: EVE Blog Banter #3 No words could describe the feelings I got after reading his story and I'm sure you'll enjoy it just as much as I if you are or have any interest in the lives of pod pilots.

Another one is more of just a description of general thoughts and how they've changed in the course of time as this particular pod pilot, Manasi, has developed and learned from his experiences. This log can be found at: Some changes in thoughts. It has me inspired to write my own views and how they've changed just over the course of the two months I've been flying my way around the universe of Eve but my apologies as time won't allow me to do so at the moment.
I've also recently added links to many other pilot logs which you will find listed to the right that I've particularly enjoyed reading. There's many others though and I'll add them as time goes on. But if you're really interested in finding other logs like my own, check out the pilot's log: CrazyKinux's Musing. This particular pilot has become quite a popular guy for good reason and he maintains a very well kept, and vast, listing of publicly available pilot's logs. (No, at the time of this writing I am not on there only because I've been keeping a sort of low profile at the moment.)

So anyways, back to grinding through more paperwork...

-ML-

Weekend War

So its the new year and to welcome it in, we got war dec'd. Again. This time it was by a couple strong members who left the alliance recently due to, as I understand it, a disagreement with a policy instated in the alliance that we are never to engage any industrial ships at any time, even if in low sec. This came as a result of our recent op in which we destroyed a Hulk. It really didn't bother me any to have this policy change but it seems these two disagreed with it. No surprise really when it was one of the two who had made a decision that day to attack the Hulk.

The war however only lasted a few days. Sometimes I feel so out of the loop on things... But either way, it seems their was some dispute between the two members that left the alliance and they split up. With only one person left in the original corp that war dec'd us, it was an obvious choice for him to withdraw. We did have one skirmish, of which I missed only because I was not on voice communications at the time. It was good to hear though that other than losing a Kestral, we managed to destroy a couple of their ships. One was a Minmatar battleship (forgetting which one) and the other was a Jaguar. The only encounter I had during this war was actually quite humorous.

On Saturday, I had just finished training for probing skills. Excited by my new-found ability, I decided to put together a Minmatar frigate, suitably named Probe, and head out to get a feel for probing. I was in a .7 system so no real worries (or so I thought) with fitting the ship with the probe launcher only. Before the training had completed, I'd found a Drake with my on-board scanner sitting close to my position where I was mining, that seemed to be without a pilot. Most likely it was in a POS somewhere but figured why not have a look when my training finished. Soon enough I was geared up and headed out. Obviously, having the skills to probe isn't the same as knowing HOW to probe. I had a tough time finding the Drake but when I saw a Jaguar on a scan, I decided to drop in and see what he was up to. Just for fun. It ended up being what could have turned into a slightly bad day for me. As I dropped out of warp, I was surprised to see the ship tagged on my overview as being at war with me! With a quick glance, I realized I had just dropped in on one of the two pilots in the enemy corporation. So as quick as I could, I aligned for a planet in the general direction I was facing and warped away. As soon as I came out of warp I turned and warped to the nearest station and docked. I then proceeded to bang my head against the inside of my pod for being so stupid to have not kept a better eye on the local comm channel.

The pilot and I exchanged a few chuckles with each other in first local then private message. He congratulated me on finding him with my probes, surprised as he was that I had warped in on him when he was trying to locate me. Surprised him just as much, which was probably the only reason I'd escaped. I admitted to him though that I hadn't even realized he was in system otherwise that event would've never taken place.

So yeah...chalk that one up to another lesson learned by this newb pilot. Besides the lesson that I really need to do some more research on how to utilize my new probing skills a little better...

-ML-