Amarr delenda est.

The Ghost Town is dead!  Long live Ghost Town II!

Yesterday was kind of an insane day on EVE for me.  I put in an epic eighteen hour game marathon.  Granted most of that time was spent in transit as I traversed all over the core systems doing inventory control, resource consolidation, and hearing elevator music in my head as I schlepped across the void.  Most of my time was uneventful and I think I might have gotten over my fears of some parts of lowsec.  Lowsec is like a bad neighborhood, as long as you move with purpose and don't attract any attention to yourself then you should okay.  I made a decent amount of profit and mapped out some skills to work on over the next few months.

I also made one of my biggest EVE-fails in my career.  I flew into Amarr highsec with a terrible rating, that is I have such a low security rating with the Amarr that the fuckers have a "shoot on sight" order for me.  Should have been something I had thought of considering how much enmity I feel towards those laser slinging shit-heel slavers.  But no, I was bopping along, ready to take care of an easy storyline mission.  Get to the mission site and there are a bunch of Amarr Navy ships, including two battleships.  I was instantly gang-banged.  Unfortunately I was flying my favorite ship, the Ishtar Ghost Town.  Yes, my favorite ships are named after songs by The Specials (and Big Trouble in Little China). As a Gallente drone boat I often have trouble with Amarr high level ships - primarily because they use a large amount of capacitor neutralizers and generally are a pain in the ass.  So Ghost Town went pop, fortunately NPCs don't podkill, and in a rookie ship I was able to snake most of my cargo and and remaining mods from the wreck.  It amuses me that the last time I lost a ship (over a year ago) it was an Ishtar to the Amarr Navy.

On the upside I was smart enough to have insurance (thank god) and since I've been making solid bank I had a pair of similarly fit Ishtars back at home base.  I've been attempting to set up my regularly visited stations with ships I regularly use so I don't have to fly there and back again just to pick up stuff.  It's an arduous, expensive, endeavor but has made life a little easier so far.  One thing I want to do is have a slew of  specialty combat fit ships available to just hop into instead of swapping gear out every time.

Amusing aside:  I was wrapping up stuff for the night and I decided to pick up one last mission.  As I was in transit to the AO I got that feeling:

Frost: Man, I'm telling you, I got a bad feeling about this drop. 
Crowe: You always say that, Frost. You always say, "I got a bad feeling about this drop." 
Frost: Okay, okay. When we get back without you, I'll call your folks. 
Share this quote

Now friends, in EVE when I get that feeling, I'm 95% right.  Something bad is gonna happen.  But, like the horror movie moron who walks into a dark room to investigate a noise I decided to check out the mission and then bop to the closest station.  I fly in, align to station because there's a nest of drones making angry noises at me, and I'm gonna bug out and deal with it later aaaaaannnnndddd Windows decides that's the best time to update and reset.  I sounded my barbaric FUCK across the rooftops of the world.  Oh, and I was flying Ghost Town II.  That's right, my new Ishtar was left alone.  Five minutes later, I'm sweating bullets and talking to my Ishtar, telling her I'm on my way, just hold together, trying to sweet talk Lady Luck, and I'm back in.  She was at half shields but holding strong.  I realigned to station and put the pedal to the metal.  Swear to God I might have actually cried if I lost a ship like that after the day I'd had.  "NEVER GET OFF THE GODDAMN BOAT, MAN!"

In other EVE news:

Capsuleer Stranglelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mining.  The Venture is one of my favorite ships in EVE and I've been able to make some decent money just by piddling around cleaning up rocks in mission areas or mining while hanging out with people.  I wouldn't make a career out of it but it gives me something easy to do.  It also gives me some time so actually look at some of the environments, which are easy to miss when you're just out kicking ass.

*cue Muzak version of "Girl From Ipanema"*

Hope all of you are well and in good spirits.

In closing here's one of my favorite pictures of Ghost Town and Amarr delenda est.