Annual progress check for Eve Online

It is time for my annual progress check in Eve Online. Again, this is for me, not for you. BTW, as of right now, I am at just under 69 million total skill points.

Since July 27^th of 2015 to July 17^th of this year, here is the breakdown of my skills:

Skillset	7/27/15 SP (millions)	7/17/16 SP (millions)
Gunnery	8.56	11.89
Engineering	4.87	5.01
Drones	5.71	8.26
Spaceship command	8.12	20.26
Armor	2.19	2.05*
Shields	2.68	2.68
Navigation	3.29	3.29
Electronic systems	1.41	1.45
Missiles	4.24	6.71
Production	0.37	0.37
Trade	0.21	0.21
Rigging	0.68	0.98
Targeting	1.37	1.37
Resource processing	0.9	0.90
Neural enhancement	0.16	0.17
Science	0.47	0.66
Social	0.04	0.04
Scanning	1.68	1.68
Leadership	0.37	0.65
Subsystems	0.04	0.27
Planet management	0.07	0.07
Corporate management	0	0

I still have no skill points in corporate management as I have no interest in running a corp.

I have no idea how my armor points actually decreased unless maybe it was from when my Proteus died.

And here is how the skills are distributed by level:

Total skills	228	249
Skills at L5	63	79
Skills at L4	63	78
Skills at L3	81	72
Skills at L2	12	12
Skills at L1	9	8

My goals last year were:

Get better at solo PvP. Get to where I can clear a C3 site solo. FC a small fleet. Kill a real character with a Proteus, not just NPCs.

How did I do? It would seem I lost track of my goals. I did get a little better at PvP I think. Although, I still do not do hardly any solo PvP. I could probably clear a C3 site solo, but I have never actually tried. I built a Proteus and got it blown up and never bothered to build another one. I FC’ed a fleet of 3, but it was PvE not PvP.

So what then are my goals for the coming year? No idea. I started training toward a dreadnaught. But I don’t see buying one in the next year as they are stupid expensive and I don’t spend enough time in game these days to get too rich. The corp is moving to Amarr space, so I’m not too sure what to expect there. Luckily behind Gallente, my Amarr skills are next highest.

Eve Progress Check

It has been just a few days over a year since my last progress check in Eve Online. I almost made this post last week, but wanted to wait for one more skill to reach level 5. In the last year, CCP has introduced T3 destroyers, which is a whole new skill set. They have also removed clones which I believe may be the reason for my Science skill count having dropped. Either that or when I put .59 last year, it should have read .06 which would have matched the previous year. During this year I used my first neural remap. Yes, I should have done it long ago. But I didn’t so too bad… Also this year I have been doing a bit more PvP and using cheap jump clones which severely hinders skill training while in them. This year, I have also come to love a new (to me) ship. The Ishtar. It has been whacked with the Nerf bat twice this year and it is still a great ship. Hopefully CCP leaves it alone for a bit and takes their stupid bat home for a while. But I am not counting on it, because it is still a great ship. This year I have trained into Interdictors, Interceptors, Electronic Warfare ships, HACs, HICs, Strategic cruisers, and probably something else. It’s been a great year full of shiny new ships.

I am still with Diamond Command. We played around in faction warfare for a bit. And we kind of quit playing PvP in Null and started spending more time in wormholes. We set up a POS in a wormhole that I think is only regularly used by one person. We got a bunch of new guys and lost a bunch of those new guys. We really have about 7 or 8 core members. The rest come and go. I think we are just too small for them. I still like the smallness of it, but I admit, it hampers some activities unless you want to go play with other groups. There is rarely enough people online when not a scheduled fleet night to run a C5 wormhole for instance. As for my progress in the Diamond Command doctrines, I finished them all long ago. I have still not completed the old Brave Newbies DPS doctrine so I am still using that as a supplemental benchmark. I say supplemental, as I am not trying to complete it, it just happens to be getting completed as I do whatever tickles my fancy.

So since July 24^th of 2014 to July 27^th of this year, here is the breakdown of my skills:

Skillset	7/27/15 SP (millions)	7/24/14 SP (millions)
Gunnery	8.56	5.30
Engineering	4.87	3.08
Drones	5.71	3.74
Spaceship command	8.12	4.05
Armor	2.19	2.19
Shields	2.68	1.61
Navigation	3.29	1.61
Electronic systems	1.41	0.78
Missiles	4.24	2.11
Production	0.37	0.30
Trade	0.21	0.21
Rigging	0.68	0.53
Targeting	1.37	0.58
Resource processing	0.9	0.89
Neural enhancement	0.16	0.16
Science	0.47	0.59
Social	0.04	0.04
Scanning	1.68	0.45
Leadership	0.37	0.05
Subsystems	0.04	0.007
Planet management	0.07	0
Corporate management	0	0

I still have no skill points in corporate management as I have no interest in running a corp.

And here is how the skills are distributed by level:

Total skills	228	188
Skills at L5	63	36
Skills at L4	63	68
Skills at L3	81	60
Skills at L2	12	17
Skills at L1	9	7

Goals for the upcoming year:

Get better at solo PvP. Get to where I can clear a C3 site solo. FC a small fleet. Kill a real character with a Proteus, not just NPCs.

Progress Check in Eve Online v.2

Last time I posted on this was Spetember of 2013.  At that point I had 11.5 million skillpoints and broke them down. A lot has changed in Eve for me since then. Back then I was a Brave Newbie and proud of it. Since then, Brave got too big, I lost my love of all that was Brave. Comms sucked, fleets mostly sucked. The system was insanely busy for low sec. I just kind of quit caring. And now I have 27.7 million total skillpoints.

So now, I am a member of a corporation called Diamond Command. It’s small, consisting of barely over 20 people, some of which are alts. We do regular scheduled fleets 3 nights a week. And it has been great. We do a wide variety of activities in fleet. Including wormhole PvE/PvP, low sec anomalies/L5 missions/PvP, and high sec L4 missions (this is only when we have too small of fleets to make money at the other stuff). It is a lot less crazy than being in Brave. And for me, it has been even more fun. Nothing is more fun the winning as the underdog. And we do a lot of that.

In Diamond Command, we have a different set of doctrine skills to train than what Brave had. Therefore my progress I covered in my last post has been skewed to my current circumstance. I will however still relate it back to the Brave doctrine as it was a HUGE one and a good benchmark.

So here is how my current skills breakdown compared to September of last year. As before, this is mostly for my reference:

Skillset                        Current SP in millions        11 months ago SP in millions

Gunnery                                        5.30                                                        2.23

Engineering                                 3.08                                                        2.07

Drones                                          3.74 (Love these things lately)          1.47

Spaceship command                 4.05                                                         1.46 (wow!)

Armor                                           2.19                                                         1.13

Shields                                          1.61                                                         0.76

Navigation                                   1.61                                                         0.46 (another wow!)

Electronics systems                   0.78                                                       0.43

Missiles                                        2.11                                                        0.31 (WOW!)

Production                                  0.30                                                       0.30 (had an alt for 6 months doing this)

Trade                                            0.21                                                        0.19

Rigging                                         0.53                                                       0.18 (nice)

Targeting                                      0.58                                                      0.18 (nice)

Resource processing                  0.89                                                      0.14 (thank you salvage L5)

Neural enhancement                 0.16                                                       0.14 (newly available inphomorph skills)

Science                                          0.59                                                      0.06

Social                                             0.04                                                      0.03

Scanning                                       0.45                                                      0.01 (got to find those wormholes)

Leadership                                   0.05 mil                                               0.00

Subsystems                                  0.007                                                   0.0000

And I still have no skills in planet management, and corporate management

 

And here is how those skills are spread:

Now                                    11 months ago

188 total skills                    153 total skills

Level 5 – 36                         16

(another one currently training)

Level 4 – 68                         41

Level 3 – 60                         58

Level 2 – 17                         30

Level 1 – 7                           8

 

Last September I showed my progress toward the Brave Newbie DPS plan as having 180 days left to complete. I am now at 118 days left to complete that plan. However, as I said, new corp, new plans. That Brave DPS plan was designed for POCO bashing. The Diamond Command plans are designed for flying doctrine PvP cruisers well, not just maximizing DPS, but hopefully maximizing survival. This also included a lot of Logi training. Logi is pretty boring, but much appreciated.

 

Since my last post, I got my Nemesis I had been wanting. I used it a bunch for about a week and realized the way I had it fit was pointless for anything but blobbing battleships. So I still have that nemesis, it has been near death many times. But I never use it anymore. Since it sounds like Diamond Command will be giving Faction Warfare a try, I may try to use it some more. However, the fit will have to be changed drastically.

Progress check in Eve Online

This is mostly for my future reference, but someone might find it of use.

I was reading a post at the Ancient Gaming Noob blog. He posted about his skill progress in Eve. He is at 110 million skill points. He posted pretty much every 10 million skill points with his progress. Sounded like a good idea so I can track my own progress as well. So here I am after about 8 months of gameplay with 11.5 million skill points. This is how they break down:

• Gunnery – 2.23 million
• Engineering – 2.07 million
• Drones – 1.47 million
• Spaceship command – 1.46 million
• Armor – 1.13 million
• Shields – .76 million
• Navigation – .46 million
• Electronics systems – .43 million
• Missiles – .31 million
• Production – .30 million
• Trade – .19 million
• Rigging – .18 million
• Targeting – .18 million
• Resource processing – .14 million
• Neural enhancement – .14 million
• Science – .06 million
• Social – .03 million
• Scanning – .01 million
• And 0 skills in Corporate management, leadership, planet management, and subsystems

This is spread out as:

• 153 skills total
• Level 5 – 16 skills
• Level 4 – 41 skills
• Level 3 – 58 skills
• Level 2 – 30 skills
• Level 1 – 8 skills

My character is Gallente. So the vast majority of gunnery and spaceship command skills are focused in that direction. I am currently focusing on training up covert ops skills so I can have some fun in a Nemesis. I have never used a cloaking device before. I have read about all the short comings that they have. And that lead me to thinking I want nothing to do with cloaking unless it was covert ops cloaking. I have sufficient skill to fly what I have come up with for my first covert ops fit Nemesis. Now I am just leveling up things to help me do more damage with it. Here is the fit I will be trying out:

[Nemesis, Sly death noob]

Micro Auxiliary Power Core IDamage Control II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction

Warp Disruptor II

Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script

Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo

Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo

Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

[empty high slot]

Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I

[empty rig slot]

Pretty menacing looking thing isn’t it?

As I said, I have the skills to fly this right now. But once skills are leveled up, damage increases significantly as my missile skills are lacking. Also, once I level up more, I can fit another rig to help with firepower. I could increase firepower a little right now by fitting a different damage control, but it would not be quite as good on defense and add about $10 million to the cost. As an example of the skill affect on this fit, with my current skills, my volley damage is 2653. With all skills at level 5, the single volley damage is 4105. And that isn’t even counting the increase I could get from another rig at that skill set, which would put it at almost 4500.

Again, I am Gallente, but since joining the Brave Newbies, I have had to focus more on doctrine training. That is a major reason my skills are so spread right now. All those missile, shield, and emissions skills have come in the last month or so. As well as many of the spaceship command skills. I had Ore and Gallente ships trained is all until just over a month ago. Now I can fly Caldari, Minmatar, and Amarr ships up to cruiser. It’s been fun trying out a variety of ships like the Brave Newbies favorite, the Talwar, and the silly pew pews from the Rifter.

Mr. Ancient Gaming Noob measures his progress by how many days of training he is from flying a Titan. I have no such aspirations right now. So I will use the Brave Newbie DPS doctrine as a guide, even though that skill plan can change a bit. But right now, I am 180 days from completing that plan. It is my basic focus, but I will deviate from it as time goes by for things such as this Covert Ops ship I am acquiring, and maybe some science skills as I am very interested in research and industry. But right now, with my current skill set, it just isn’t profitable to try. Especially out here in Barleguet where most minerals are just silly expensive.

My new-found love for the Incursus

There I was, scrolling through some of my old blog posts, when I saw a picture I posted of my Incursus. Well, not my Incursus specifically, but an Incursus. The caption I assigned to the photo is: “The Incursus. My disposable, nearly useless ship.” Yet when I saw the picture, I felt the warm fuzzies of happy times. Why you ask? I’ll tell you. After all, that’s what a blog is for.

Almost a week ago, on Sunday afternoon, I went on a roam with the fine folks from  Agony Unleashed. There was about 70 of us in fleet at the beginning, and I think about 50 or so by the end. This was to be kind of a training roam to go with our fleet training class we had with them on Saturday, so we were supposed to bring frigates. I chose the Incursus as that is what I am best trained for. I assumed we were all going to die glorious deaths, as that is the Brave Newbie way. And since we were going to have a decent swarm, I decided to fit the ship on the cheap. So My final fit Incursus came to about $3 Million (Barleguet prices). I hopped into my jump clone and loaded up my worthless Incursus.

Here is a video someone posted of what happened. This video of course is not specific to me, but this is our roam. At least the first hour of it. We ended up going back out after this video for more fun.

As it was a couple hours long and had tons of action, I will not break it down blow-by-blow. But here is my killboard for the event (all items from September 8^th)  I no longer feel my Incursus is mostly worthless. In fact, I love it. I survived 9 bombs and a few hits from baddies. At one point I had a battle cruiser locked onto me that actually landed a hit. Ouch, that hurt. But I lived. At the end of the roam my shield had been destroyed, my armor destroyed, I had 31% hull left, and I was bellowing out smoke as I trucked it home. Before class I named her “Class” as I figured she would not make it home alive. After class, I renamed her “Catwoman” which was actually a suggestion of someone else in fleet, representing her surviving 9 bombs, when most frigs in the fleet were blowing up after 2-4 bombs.

And here she is again. I wish you could customize the look in the game so I could make her uniquely mine. In fact, if I could suggest anything to CCP games to add in the game, it would be a painting program ala Forza or something similar.

Not Useless at all

My Eve Online experience so far

At this point, I have been playing for a few months. Enough to get me up to about 7 million skill points if that clears anything up for you. I have seen many of the memes, browsed many of the blogs, and followed the advice of many. Still, I feel a bit lost. But I have had fun most of the time. As I mentioned in a previous post, my in-game name is Spectre Imperium in case you feel like saying hi, putting a bounty on my head, or trying to scam me, or whatever other nefarious activity you have planned.

Me, in all my glory

Like most people, I started a new character and did the training missions. I have since then found out that most people do one or two of the career training paths. I did them all. I wanted to try everything. That way I could see why people choose one path over another. I actually enjoyed all of them. Well, maybe not the probing one. I admire people that can probe well. I sure can’t. And mining, while a bit tedious and dull, is for me a necessary evil. And it can be a decent time waster while I am doing homework or some other real-life task.

So I started out as Gallente. Knowing what I know now, I would likely have chosen a different race. Gallente are a bit too reliant upon drones for killing other ships. And while drones offer some nice help, I have always liked playing the brawler character in games. Not to say that the Gallente can’t brawl. Far from it. They just seem more limited on their choices for brawling machines than say the Caldari.

PvP

PvP is nearly pointless for a character less than 6 months old. And from my experience it seems maybe even longer. Now you can fleet up and have some fun in a group. But solo, you will get worked every time. So my first couple months I spent doing NPC security missions. I tried some hauler missions and some mining missions and such, but Security seemed to be where all the action was. I got to the point I was doing level 4 missions. Most of the time solo. I would have to bail out mid-mission a few times to repair and buy more drones. But I finished the missions. Sometimes I would get a friend to help out. This made the missions pretty easy and I was starting to feel like a bad-ass. So I joined a player corp that was involved in FW. FW stands for Faction Warfare. This is basically joining a military in the big war between the 4 factions. My corp fought for the Minmitar which are allied with the Gallente.

 

Wow. My character is way too new for this. First off, as a FW participant, you live in what is called “Low-Sec” or Low Security. In low security, anyone can shoot you without much repercussion. Sure, gate guns will shoot at you if you attack someone you aren’t supposed to. But away from gates, you are free to kill or die. Therefore, everyone you come across is to be considered an enemy unless they are a member of the same military. And it seems everyone there has years of experience under their belt. Also, as a member of the military, anyone fighting for the other side is free to shoot you. Even when close to gates. And not only are they free to shoot you, they are usually actively hunting your people.

 

At this point I had spent a couple months in high-sec doing missions and felt almost indestructible. Well, when I joined this FW corp, it turns out I was DEEP in enemy territory prior to joining. Even though I was in high-sec I was an enemy of the state and therefore open game. Talk about stress. I was trying to relocate 22 jumps away, 16 or so of those through enemy territory. Well it was at this point I lost my first ship, other than the one a training mission requires you to lose. Not only did I lose my first ship, I lost my favorite battle cruiser, the Brutix, that I had been dominating missions in. Then I lost my Iteron full of all my goodies. I lost both of them to gate camps. One I lost because I went AFK for a second. The other I lost because it was just too slow and outnumbered. I ended up losing about $180 million, which at this point seemed like a fortune to me. Plus I lost another $100 million when I got podded during the whole ordeal. Podded is basically when your escape pod is destroyed. You lose whatever brain implants you have purchased to make training faster. This was my first time being podded. My heart raced, I was pissed. At the same time I was stoked because I felt like this meant the game was finally afoot. “OK, you want it that way? I’m gonna fuck you up.” I soon realized that the thought was nice, but no, I was not going to be fucking up anyone any time soon.

My Brutix. She was a Brute, and she served me well.

My Iteron. What an ugly, slow, weak POS. But she sure had room for junk in her trunk.

I got hosed by a little frigate. So I decided to put one together built specifically for PvP. I spared no expense, which didn’t hurt badly since my skills were too low for almost anything tech II. I had heard of some people loving PvP in a ship called the Incursus. So that is what I built. This time, I am the aggressor, therefore I have the advantage, and I will score a kill. Yeah. Nope. First gate I jump through I get dog-piled by like 6 little bitch frigates. I can’t move, every shot I fire misses. It seems their hits are doing more damage than mine were when in missions with my much bigger more powerful ship. WTF is going on? Ship goes boom. Pod goes boom. Here I am again rebuilding. OK, those little frigates seemed to pack a punch. Why did they seem so strong? How can my ship that is the same class be so out gunned? After looking into it a bit more, I find that with my stupid low skills, I am doing half the DPS (damage per second) that I would with the same fit with all skills maxed out. And that’s not even counting the added damage I could be doing with the better fit the maxed out skills would allow me. What the hell? What am I supposed to do? I can’t compete with this crap.

The Incursus. My disposable, nearly useless ship.

I talk to others in my corp. Turns out, solo is almost always suicide. They happen to have a fleet going out soon to clear out some plexers. OK, sounds fun. I am told to build up a frigate. So I do. I am ready. We fly around as a group finding smaller groups of bad guys to kill. I have a ton of fun. And it turns out I wasn’t even listed on a single kill-mail because I didn’t deliver any damage. So essentially I was flying around accomplishing nothing. I sure felt like I was doing some good at the time. Oh well, I will keep trying. I will eventually figure it out.

Well, after 3 weeks of so of having my ships blown up, I decide FW just isn’t for me yet. I only had one almost successful PvP experience. I jumped a guy plexing. I had him webbed and scrammed, I was pounding on him. Got him down to almost dead then all of a sudden a message popped up saying the target was invincible and he was no longer anywhere to be seen. Still now, months later, I have no clue what happened. So then, I leave the corp and go back to high-sec with my tail between my legs. I am still constantly paranoid that I am being hunted. Everywhere I go I expect a fight. FW messed with my head. It took quite a while to calm down and get to a normal level of paranoia. I finally get there and neutral people all around me start getting killed. Right here in high sec. WTF is going on? Ah, suicide ganking I find out is what it is called. Why did I not see any of this until now? Now I am super paranoid again, even though in high-sec since leaving FW, I have yet to be targeted. So again, I start to calm down.

At this point I came across a blog where the guy writes about how he got rich in the first 30 days of playing Eve Online. You can find it here http://marketsforisk.blogspot.com/ I have a little over $500 million. I figure I have a nice nest egg to start with so getting really rich should be cake. I fly my pod to Jita. Pick 3 high profit items that I know most PvP guys require every time they lose a ship. I buy a new Iteron Mark V which is the shipping barge of choice since the latest game update. And I pack it with about $350 million worth of goods. I stick to a high-sec route to avoid gate camps. I make my last jump home into Rens. The scanner looks clear. I tell my ship to dock at Rens. Before I even come all the way out of cloak, my ship is blown up and my pod is warping toward the base. I see a message from the game saying the Concord (NPC police) is going to kill him. That does little to console me. I just lost almost my entire nest egg. I was stupid. I tried following the advice of that marketforisk guy, but tried to do it better. I failed miserably. I put my Megathron up for sale back near Jita where it was still based as I was afraid to touch it anymore as it is a big juicy target. It sold in under a day. Guess I should have asked for more money. Oh well. At this point I just need some money. Guess I will go back to doing missions and salvaging them. After about an hour of this, I start getting the itch. I need PvP. But FW was just too stressful. I can’t imagine the stress of null-sec.

Prior to this I had applied to a new corp that is a huge one with a big long admission process. But they are centered on teaching people how to be awesome. A few days after submitting my application, I finally got my in-game mail telling me to join their rush queue. I joined that as soon as I got home from work. After a couple hours I gave up waiting for my name to be called. I tried again the next night. Same result; A couple hours of sitting there accomplishing nothing. Meanwhile I am just running level 3 missions in my Vexor. The Vexor is a ship I had not tried until recently, and I am finding I really enjoy it. Provided I can keep it a decent distance away from the enemy. It has big drone bonuses and a ton of space for them. However, it does not have very thick skin. Even on simple NPC missions, once I have moved in too close to the bigger ships, it doesn’t take long to lose a ship. Hopefully by the time I spend a few weeks with this new corp, provided I ever actually get in, I can at least attempt to solo PvP. Losing ships doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s losing expensive cargo and implants. But hey, some day I may be able to be the cause of stress rather than the receiver of it.

Holy crap, another super long rambling post. I need to update more often so I can avoid these uncomfortable situations 🙂 There is more to come. I am sure. Happy hunting…

What happened? Where did I go?

So it has been 6 months since I posted to my blog. So much has happened in that time, yet my only excuse for not posting is laziness. I keep getting the feeling like I need to post something, and when I head over to my computer to do so, I get sidetracked. So first of all, to get this baby restarted, I will give a brief update on my life. My plan is to follow it up with more detailed updates.

#1- The puppies are both doing great. Odie is getting more and more scars from Heidi playing rough with him. But he doesn’t seem to notice or care. He loves her no matter how rough she is with him. I will post some more recent pics of both of them in the more detailed update. BTW, we are now able to let them stay out roaming the house during the day which not only makes me happy because they aren’t stuck in their kennels while I work, but also makes me feel better about the safety of the house. They are big dogs and someone would be crazy to want to mess with them.

#2- The STi is still here. And still a pretty fun car. I wish it was 500 lbs lighter. But it’s a pretty nice car. I bought some new wheels for it, and it finally got its first oil change. I will update more about the STi on its own detailed update.

#3- I finished another semester of school. They decided to throw all economics classes at me this semester. 14 credit hours worth. I was able to finish them well ahead of time to enable me to spend more time with #4.

#4- My babies are here for the summer. It’s crazy how much I missed them. They stayed with their mom during the school year because the schools in rural areas are able to teach kids a little better as they don’t spend half their resources teaching little Mexican and African kids how to speak English rather than teaching grade appropriate material. BTW, I picked o0n African and Mexican because that is what my area is spending all resources on. I am sure other areas have similar issue with other imports, but this happens to my area’s issue. Around my house, it is very tough for a student to excel. No kid left behind seems to mean no kid is allowed ahead. But once you get out of the city and into the country that changes. My boy is doing well. He is winning awards for intelligence and service. And he seems to be well ahead of the curve in math, science, and reading. And my little girl starts school next year and is so excited to do so. She definitely is more art-centric than the boy.

#5- I got the kart back together and ready to go for this season. But I have been so busy with kids and school and vacations I honestly don’t even know when I am going to be able to go out and use it. I was dealing with a weird issue last year that would never let it rev as high as it should have. And while still fast, it was frustrating. Well, over the winter, I found the issue and fixed it. So the kart should be a whole new animal this year. As the issue was something that not only affected the revving, but was most likely affecting a whole lot more in the way it runs.

#6- The S13 I bought back turned out to be a lot of work to fix up, and it is almost done. I guess it deserves its own detailed update. Can’t wait to get that thing on the road again. And it is oh so close.

#7- Fishing, I haven’t done it for decades. But together, the kids and I are going to figure it out again. For me, it is reliving my youth days of fishing with my grandpa; the one my boy is named after. For the kids, it is just outside fun with dad. And they can never get enough of that.

#8- The camp chef. I got Cara a Camp Chef with (3) 15,0000 BTU burners. We have yet to take it camping, but have used it a ton at the house. The griddle is amazing. It makes by far the best breakfast that can be had in this world. It will see a bunch of use this summer as well. The only reason this item gets its own number is because it makes food SOOOOOO yummy.

#9- Still playing racquetball at least twice a week, sometimes more. Still mostly winning. Still not to the point I feel comfortable taking on the best guys at the gym, but probably good enough now I could hold my own if I could get past my intimidation of the situation. Funny I would suffer from that as I am usually the one doing the intimidating.

#10- Eve Online. I played this when it first came out like 10 years ago. I played through the 1 week trial or whatever it was back then. At the time I didn’t make enough money to play games I had to pay for monthly unless they meant a lot to me. And not many people played back then, so it was hard to find people you cared to talk to. And PvP action was actually not that common. But it has had a decade to evolve. And evolve it has. Wow, it is a totally different game. So many people, so much action, politics, commerce, and options. And there is such a huge online metaverse for it. There are a ton of blogs and reference sites and applications for the game now. It is truly an amazing thing. So I have stuck with it for about 4 months now. And I will likely continue with it. My level of participation may vary from time to time. But it is a good time waster when not busy with life. If I only have an hour, I can go run a couple NPC missions then salvage all the loot. If I have a bit more time than that I can join a fleet (although I am currently between corps right now) and go hunt for some PvP action. Or if I am doing school work I can just send my Retriever out mining in high sec where it is safe, even if less profitable. BTW, my in game name is Spectre Imperium, so if you feel like blabbing or putting a bounty on my head, there you go… BTW, I will likely do more detailed updates on Eve as well as there is so much to learn and I am doing my best to soak it all in. Yes, even after 4 months, I feel rather clueless. And as I said, I am currently between corps in the game, and there of course is a little bit of story to be told behind that.

#11- Biking. I have not even pulled the bike off the ceiling yet this season. Any available outside time has had the S13 being the top priority. Now that it is able to be started with its newish engine, that is no longer the case. So maybe I will at least be able to get some time in biking with my boy. Speaking of the boy, I taught him to ride without training wheels just last weekend. He was so proud of himself. And he has been riding a whole bunch now. Last time out he wrecked pretty hard. So he took a day off. Hopefully he isn’t too discouraged now.

#12- Fixing up the house. New flooring in living room and bathroom. Painted kitchen cabinets. New light fixtures in the entire basement. No longer have a friend living in the basement. Textured and painted three of the bedrooms. Began the basement living room transformation into a man cave. Mounted a TV to the wall on a full motion mount. Installed the all important pool table and dart board. Brought in a bar table. Rearranged furniture to make the room more open. Installed art spotlight lighting on one end with pool table chandelier lighting on the other end. Moved kids rooms around. Luckily Cara did most of that work. I changed lighting and mounted TV’s and shelves and such while she did texture and painting and flooring. She definitely had the hard part of that mess. We also mounted nice IKEA wall mount desks in the kid’s rooms for doing homework on.

#13- Sorry for slacking for so long. As you can see, it has been a full six months. But my only excuse is laziness. I recently saw a quote graphic type thing that reminded me of why I post on here. And reminded me that just because I am so busy with so many things, it doesn’t mean it is OK to be lazy at other things, especially things that make me happy or reduce my stress. In the end, I enjoy writing on here. Not just because of the 100 or so people that visit every day. But because I enjoy it. It’s a release for me, much the way driving or playing racquetball or designing things is. I like knowing that over 14,000 people have enjoyed my pictures enough to at least click on them to see them in full size. I like knowing that I sent over 100 people to a guy’s business that makes triggers for my pellet gun. I’m sure he likes that even more than I do. And that makes it all that much better. I like knowing I have sent nearly that many people to a friend’s business website. All just by sharing my thoughts on things that happen in my life. It’s nice knowing I have even just a small influence on the world that I have no direct contact with. And it was kind of irking me that my visitor count is less than half of what it was at one point and that is 100% my own fault for not posting more often. BTW, here is a link to that quote http://maxcdn.zenpencils.com/comics/2013-06-11-johngreen.jpg

Elder Scrolls Skyrim video released

Holy crap! This game looks amazing. Today, Bethesda released the first video showing off in-game graphics for the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series. Their new Creation Game Engine is a huge step up from the previous one. As you can see in this video, the movement of people and animals is immensely better than in Oblivion. I was hoping for more facial shots as the people in Oblivion were downright ugly. But from what you can see in this video, that aspect also seems very much improved over the Gamebryo engine. Also, lighting and texture seems improved as well. Man, I can’t wait for this game to be released.

Dead Money DLC Trailer

Bethesda posted the new trailer for the first DLC for Fallout: New Vegas on their blog this morning. You can check out their blog here. Since I am almost finished with my 2nd playthrough, I am very much looking forward to this… Not sure what to think about the ghost looking things in the trailer though. How do you kill a ghost? Are they adding Proton packs and ghost traps so you can live out your Ghost Buster fantasies?

Fallout: New Vegas preliminary review

I have been playing Fallout: New Vegas for a few days now. My character is a level 15 on a game that has a level cap of 30. So we will say I am half way through the game. Whether that is true or not…

My first thought: Man, this is the best game add-on for Fallout 3 of the 3 add-ons I have bought. Problem is, this is supposed to be a new game created by a new group with big plans and bigger ideas.