Grounded.

It appears while I was docked up and resting in Aldali my Pilot's License ran out of time. So now i'm scrounging around the station doing a bit of trading until I can afford to renew it. Early estimates say i'll be back on my ship in about 9 days, with a 1 day margin of error. But they're just quick estimates I threw together, not exactly accurate.

Also finally got around to updating the Blog Pack list on here, it's had the old one on for a while and figured while I have some spare time i'd sort it out.

So until I can get back out this station, Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Out of Capsule.

Well not much to say at the moment, thought i'd throw up an update anyways...

Well as the heading for this post is "Out of Capsule" you may have guessed that it's about my life outside of EVE, but first a little back story...

I made the decision when I started EVE that I wasn't going to take it seriously, that real life activities are always going to come first and that I won't get sucked into a "serious" corporation which requires me to login 60% of my waking life to sit outside a POS for 2 hours cycling lasers.

I made this decision because I know I have an addictive personality, and i'm a heavy gamer, or was. When I played World of Warcaft I was on it from the moment I got home to early hours in the morning every day. I'd skip going out with friends to raid, and I even told my girlfriend at the time that I was busy and wasn't coming to bed for a while... which is *always* bad. So yeah. I decided i'd not let that happen again, so where I enjoy logging on and blowing the hell out of a miner, hunting newbie cruisers and suiciding against 3 year old players in a Raven, if someone invites me out i'll stop the fight, wait for GCC, go to home base and log out. If i'm far away i'll just dock in a near station and log out... and so far it's worked out well.

I have a few friends and corporations in game that I can roam with or duel or get stuff hauled to me. I have enough kills and activity to get satisfaction from the game, and generally the subscription is definately worth it.

But this post is about real life, not EVE so much. As i've said in a previous post i'm a games tester, a good job, pays low but pays the bills, easy enough, and i'm good at it. I'm not sitting here boasting about my "uber skillz" as a gamer, or how "leet my epeen" is or whatever. I'm good at games, i'm a very good tester, and I know how to do my job very well. Easy as that.

Some may think i've got an amazing job as a games tester aswell, which honestly it's good. But since i've started I can't come home any more and play FEAR until I go to bed, or sit on Halo on a Friday night until the early hours of the morning. Counter-Strike is just another FPS and Fable is just another Action-RPG. Mainly this is because at work i've been through countless games to test, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for just over a year now. After that amount of testing games just aren't the same as they used to be.

Now I don't mean I don't like games, the complete opposite. I love games, gaming, reading about games, playing games, writing about games(here :P), watching upcoming games, reading fiction made from games, basically everything to do with games, I love. It just means my perceived view of games has changed alot. Instead these days I prefer technical exercises games. Games which are complex, require alot of though, or try something new or different, push the boundaries, have a twist not common to other games.

The games I like to play these days are games like Fallout, with it's nice little side-quests and gritty but beautiful world; Oblivion where the path isn't laid out before the player and to this day i've never completed, but have just gone around doing various guild quests, side quests, just running through forests, I like the scope of these games with their open world environments; Mirror's Edge with it's free-running, where it isn't perfect but the flaws are acceptable, the design might be simple, but the execution is what matters and it's great. And that's to name a few.

Of course EVE is missing off that list but I think everyone will agree it's quite obvious what I like about the game from a technical perspective, so I won't go into it... yet

Well 2 days ago we got told the head count in our room in work is to be cut down. I've been there a year but it's always been on 3 month rolling contracts. I've stated I don't want to be made permanent and there's reasons for that decision which I don't know if I can discuss or not, so I won't. But there's 28 of us in there, and they only want 10 to be left. They're opening up a late shift for another 10 but that's still 8 going, and I can do the late shift but it'll mean getting a taxi home every day, which is just a pointless waste of money and a ballache really. So we're anxiously waiting to see who's going to be left after the cut. I think i'll be alright, but hell, nothings for certain so...

Well as such i've been spending alot of time writing up my CV and Covering Letters for 2 jobs. Only 2 jobs i'm applying for, both still in QA, 1 in games for another company, 1 in software for yet another company. Both pay more and maybe I needed this push to actually go for them, but yeah, I can write bug reports like a demon, but after 2 days i've only got the games company CV and letter written, and even then the letter isn't quite finished. It's a shame that I can help anyone else out easily enough with their CVs but the moment it comes to my own i'm useless. Oh well.

Well wish me luck anyways if you want, i've got to get back to typing this all up, even if I do want to go chase some carebears and drink their tears.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Rifter Dreams

Why, oh why, did noone ever forcefully beat into me how good the Rifter is as a frigate. I like my Punishers, I like them alot, but the sheer amount of damage a Rifter can put out at speed is amazing for a Frigate. During my time offline I trained minmatar frigates to 5 along with small projectile turrets and various other skills, so now I have a fully t2 fitted rifter worth about 12 mil.

God this thing is lethal though. When I first put it together I was using republic fleet EMP in it and orbitting 500m-1000m, while testing it on a friend... and I got whooped every time... He gave me some pointers and now I try do fast orbits between 3-6k with Barrage S... And I pretty much won every time, easily.

So far the only thing i've caught with it was a Retriever though, it was mining in a belt in my home system, and didn't warp out when I warped in 30km away from it, his own fault really. I tore it apart quickly enough and caught the pod, then tried to ransom, to be told to just pod him. I thought it didn't work like that? :P Ah well, podded him anyways and now i'm sitting at less SS with my Rifter deflowered.

I'm working on getting the skills to make a passive tank Punisher at the moment. Trying to get it to 10k Effective HP with decent damage output. Just gotta wait 11 more hour for the last skill to be high enough to fit everything, then it should be a great little trap ship :D

Not much else to report really... am trying to get a job on more pay IRL and atm i'm utterly broke until the 28th when I get paid again, so at some point my subscription might run out lol, time to get as much in before then as possible I suppose hehe.

Fly Safe

- Noir Avlaa.

Back online

Hoorah! And now i'm finally back online! I now have a nice new PC and internet set up in the new house after nearly a month of being offline without a PC... fun times. But throughout the month i've been updating my skills at a mate's, so now I can pretty much get a fully fitted t2 rifter out, aswell as a few other skills i've managed to hit 5 on, not bad :D

Well I only logged on briefly tonight and nothing really happened except me saying hello again to friends, probably won't be on tomorow either as it's games night at a mate's place... so until thursday!...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.