My corp haz a what ?!?!

Hey there people of New Eden, bloggers, scoundrels and carebears! It's been a while since my last blog post, not because of burn out or some such reason, but more because frankly, nothing really special has been happening for me in EVE. I guess such things can happen when training for a long time for something big and expensive; just before spring hits I will be plying the space lanes in a brand spankin' new Sleipnir, and because it will become my pride and joy money-making boat I will fit it accordingly, which is, hrm, NOT CHEAP! So lately I've been doing the slightly boring... what am I saying, boring as fuck job of missioning for ISK. These days I'm using a Maelstrom that's basically a practice fit for the Sleipnir, and let's just say it is Tanky with a capital T. When I step into the command ship things will only get better because the tank will be a bit better due to bonuses and faction modules, but the resistances will be just awesome, the signature radius will be much smaller than a battleship, and the tracking and speed will be pretty much doubled, all while retaining the same DPS. Estimated expenditure: 500 million ISK. I know it's not much for some of you older players flying capitals and such, but for me, who before November had never really had a solid ISK income, it's a Big Fucking Deal. So far I'm just over 400 million ISK in my wallet; in normal times this would be more than enough to say "OK, enough of the carebear shit and start fraggin'" but I want the Slippy bad enough to rough it through the boredom. On the flip side, I'm feeling much more comfortable flying around in HACs, and I need to get a Rapier just after the Sleipnir. Yes, things are getting fun just before I hit 30 million skill points... only 2 million to go :)

But the main reason for the blog update happened yesterday night as my corpmate and I were casually carebearin' around and listening to Adragon Technochrist on EVE Radio. Adragon is one of the most colorful of the ER DJs and always has some contests or draws with nifty prizes in ISK, ships, faction stuff, etc. And I must say that before yesterday we already had a good average at-bat because a few weeks ago I won an Apocalypse battleship (promptly sold to fellow Montrealer Cartboard Box cuz I'm nowhere near Amarr BSes) and corpmate Si Gong won 150 million ISK. For a long time now Adragon had been playing his own version of "Deal or No Deal" for prizes ranging from packs of cigarettes all the way up to an Orca. Well yesterday as I logged in one of the first things I heard was that the Orca was going to be given away that night, and if donations were good he was also giving away a billion ISK in another prize. How much more win can you get! So of course I bought a bunch of tickets and so did Si Gong, who logged in about 15 minutes before the ticket booth closed. After that we had to wait until DJ Erkenfresh's show to find out who the winners were because Adragon ran out of time with his crazy/funny antics but the wait was more than worth it: some guy named Derdlim (sp?) won the billion ISK prize.... and God-Damned Lucky Mother-Fucker corpmate Si Gong won the fucking Orca !!!!

Now of course after the dust settled and Si came back down to Earth, I pop open EVEmon to see just how far I am from flying that baby: 38 days, 15 hours and change. Si Gong checks.... about the same. The ship's location... 26 jumps from Rens, in the middle of Amarr space. Over this weekend we'll think about what our options are. The easy way out would be for Si to put it on contracts, but as I told him an Orca is too good an asset even if you don't use it for mining ops. Option #2 would be to train for it, which would kill a month and a half of either us' training for more interesting stuff. Option #3 would be to get an industrial character, but neither of us has the ISK needed for a character transaction. And option #4 would be to have an Orca pilot (/me waves in the general direction of Letrange...) travel to the ship's location and fly it to D94's HQ. Anyway, we'll see what we'll do.

Quick news out of EVE now, last monday I had the privilege of attending the Eric Clapton / Jeff Beck concert at Montreal's Bell Centre... zomg the guitar awesomeness. I'm not Clapton's biggest fan but Jeff Beck... DAMN !!! Add to that the sound quality that was just amazing and the fact that I was on the floor's 20th row, front center, and what a show !!! Thanks to my buddy Andre for inviting me to such an event!

And back to EVE but still in the nightlife topic, this Saturday, the 27th of February, will not only be a Montreal EVE Pilots' Meet, but it will also be "La Nuit Blanche à Montréal", the Montreal all-nighter where various clubs, museums, restaurants, and public transit will be open all night long. Yes, all night long! I don't expect to go to bed before the sun rises :) If you're in or around the greater Montreal area, please come have a chat with us in the EVE MTL channel, and/or post on the EVE-O forums in the Events & Gatherings section, we have a stickied thread there. Meet time is 7PM EST at Brutopia, 1215 Crescent st., between Ste-Catherine and René-Lévesque. Look for us in the basement, paying no attention whatsoever to the Olympics :)

Until next time, fly like Willy the orca :))

o7