~or I Has Been Industrious IRL…
While I have kidded a few times about segueing into bittervetedness… in truth I still love this game we play, I’m just not loggin on much is all, and here is why...
While I have kidded a few times about segueing into bittervetedness… in truth I still love this game we play, I’m just not loggin on much is all, and here is why...
Granted I/we have had some serious RL>EVE crap… in my personal life I was having some ‘issues’, which I hope to have got past mostly… ingame when SYJ left Anoikis > HBHI left SYJ > then HBHI left Anoikis too… for those who dunt know, we have had some serious incorp stuff goin on too…
AI shipping off to Korea and Mab (dealing with far heavier RL>EVE shit than I) leaving HBHI to go back to the lone wolf life… due to our overall inactivity a few (ok ALL) of the (very few) ingame members we had in corp have left for moar active pastures… and for the very first time in the last 3 and a half YEARS… I found myself downloading and playing, and enjoying (ZOMG) a different game than EvE…
A Different Game…
An oldie, a space MMO much much simpler than EvE but one that is still a bit of a sandbox and is a persistent world… though not anywhere near as complex or as stunning visually. It does however, have a more ‘fighter’ style interface... "Vendetta Online". I am sure many of you know of it and no, it is by no means anywhere near the same class of MMO or even ‘game’ as EvE… but, then again, that’s sorta the charm for me… it is NOT ANYWHERE as complex, pervasive, invasive, time-consuming and monkey-on-yer-back addictive as EvE…
I can logon, mindlessly shoots the crap out a butt-tonne of droans, and log off and not have that gods damned constant nagging voice in the back of me brain saying “What are you MISSING!?” “What’s going on in there while you’re out here!?” I get everytime I logoff of EvE. I could care less what’s going on in VO while I’m logged off… I have made NO friends in there, I have talked to NO ONE and I interact with NO ONE… hence it is ‘just a game’ to me… and an easy one too.
Also in VO I can fly and fight in First Person (several view and control options actually) and with the ability to switch to a physics flight model that is vastly closer to reality if I want to too… (After 3 years “swooping” like a submarine around in EvE I find it fascinating to accelerate in a given direction, cut thrust and actually COAST… then turn and do only that… yaw and pitch around while still travelling along the original line of thrust, not curve around a submarine…). It is a VERY different ‘feel’ to space combat than we have in EvE and one I will admit that I have very greatly missed.
Also in VO I can fly and fight in First Person (several view and control options actually) and with the ability to switch to a physics flight model that is vastly closer to reality if I want to too… (After 3 years “swooping” like a submarine around in EvE I find it fascinating to accelerate in a given direction, cut thrust and actually COAST… then turn and do only that… yaw and pitch around while still travelling along the original line of thrust, not curve around a submarine…). It is a VERY different ‘feel’ to space combat than we have in EvE and one I will admit that I have very greatly missed.
One of my all-time favorite games back in the day was "Descent"… a game that, with your settings right, had physics that felt quite real (you know, for a game). I had a state of the art (at the time) Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS and WCS Mark II Throttle and Stick set… and OMG was that pure nothing but fun to fly.
I really hate so many of the physics breaker in EvE… the little irritations that just add up and up… In space there is no friction or wind resistance… if you cut off your engines YOU KEEP FUKKING GOING… you do NOT coast to a stop... gods what crap. And while we have no ‘real world’ experience with this yet, I feel it is safe to assume that once we have ‘warp drive’ technology (or whatever) we won’t actually warp THROUGH planets and moons or ANYTHING…
Oh hell wanna talk about a little taste of REAL in the Virtual… in VO to dock up you have to fly INTO (one of several) ingress docking ports and you fly out of (one of several) DIFFERENT egress ports!!! OH MY GODS!! Really? You mean you don’t just suddenly and for no gods damned reason go !POOF! automagically teleporting inside the station once you hit a certain distance?? And then. again for no gods damned good reason, you have to ‘fly’ out of the ONLY fukking ‘door’ on the station as absolutely EVERYONE else no matter how many people are trying to get out all at once!?
Oh hell wanna talk about a little taste of REAL in the Virtual… in VO to dock up you have to fly INTO (one of several) ingress docking ports and you fly out of (one of several) DIFFERENT egress ports!!! OH MY GODS!! Really? You mean you don’t just suddenly and for no gods damned reason go !POOF! automagically teleporting inside the station once you hit a certain distance?? And then. again for no gods damned good reason, you have to ‘fly’ out of the ONLY fukking ‘door’ on the station as absolutely EVERYONE else no matter how many people are trying to get out all at once!?
I swear it’s a slice of heaven in VO for me to fly inbound to a station… pick my entry point and use lateral and vertical thrusters to align to the dock while reducing forward acceleration (be nice if we had to actually ‘reverse’ thrust even…) and then to glide serenely INSIDE the dock until the walls surround you and then (and ONLY then) do you do a session change to ‘docked’… Gods I miss the little immersions. Why Oh Why can’t our stations in EvE have multiple ingress and egress docks? Why can’t we just accept a moar ‘reality’ in our virtuality and actually FLY our ships in and out of stations?
At the very least would open some real possibilities for changes and tweaks to dock games… Mebbe if aligned and flying in towards the dock and inside a set range then Scotty (The Drunken Docking Manager) would actually tractor your ship inside? Ghostly green beams and everything? And once locked up by the station tractor beams and ‘under tow’ what if you were considered to be under the protection of the station… and its guns?
If attacked while under tow (or within a close enough range of the station or dock undock ports that Scotty would decide [insert alcoholically randomized algorithms here] that your attackers pose a threat to station operations…) you would then be under station protection, not CONCORD… but you wouldn’t be able to insta-dock unless you were under tow either…
What if we had a ‘set’ of ingress and egress docking ports facing more or less (IE not insta-warpable… but close) towards each and every gate in the system?… When docked you would choose which dock you wanted to exit by BUT, if that sodden cad Scotty determined [more alcoholic coding here] there was ‘too much traffic’ on your chosen undock you would be routed out some other dock… (Hmmmmm?)
What if we had a ‘set’ of ingress and egress docking ports facing more or less (IE not insta-warpable… but close) towards each and every gate in the system?… When docked you would choose which dock you wanted to exit by BUT, if that sodden cad Scotty determined [more alcoholic coding here] there was ‘too much traffic’ on your chosen undock you would be routed out some other dock… (Hmmmmm?)
Hell anything would be better than the inane situation we have had to deal with docking and undocking as long as I have flown in EvE…
but I digress…
Industriously Manufacturing Ammunition…
In EvE there is one helluva lot of ammunition produced and expended… I myself have processed many a batch in our Ammunition Assembly Array. Being a Matarii, I prefer guns firing projectile ammo… but, there is another reason that is my preference… you see, I also produce a helluva lot of ammunition, in multiple calibers, In Real Life…
I have been an avid hunter and target shooter all my life. Dad started teaching me woodcraft at 8 and I have been a hunting and target shooting ever since. I participated in Military Open Sight Matches back in my 20s (ranges from 100 to 600 yards).
I once caused a bit of a stir as the only competitor on the line at MCB Quantico with a match-tuned 7.62x39 Norinco (Chinese) SKS rifle. I have worked in firearms retail as a salesman and store manager and I have been a gunsmith all my life… I had honed the trigger action of my SKS, replaced the Chinese milspec sights for elevation & windage adjustable sights and, nothing to do with accuracy but, I had also hand worked the stock to a beautiful polish.
I once caused a bit of a stir as the only competitor on the line at MCB Quantico with a match-tuned 7.62x39 Norinco (Chinese) SKS rifle. I have worked in firearms retail as a salesman and store manager and I have been a gunsmith all my life… I had honed the trigger action of my SKS, replaced the Chinese milspec sights for elevation & windage adjustable sights and, nothing to do with accuracy but, I had also hand worked the stock to a beautiful polish.
Anyway, back when I was a wee lad of but 6 I would always sit with my dad in our basement while he reloaded the 12 and 20ga shotshells we used each hunting season. He taught me and by 8 I was sitting on his lap reloading under his watchful eye. In my 20’s I got into pistol and rifle reloading and build the loading bench I still use today.
I have multiple presses, from single stage to automatic and reload a variety of calibers… 9mm, 38spl./.357 Mag & 45ACP in pistol and .30MI Carbine, .223 Rem (5.56mm US military), 7.62x39 (Russian military), .308 Win (7.62x51 US military) and the .30-06 (7.62x62 US military)… plus, of course, 12 and 20ga shotshells having inherited my father’s old shotshell press.
I have multiple presses, from single stage to automatic and reload a variety of calibers… 9mm, 38spl./.357 Mag & 45ACP in pistol and .30MI Carbine, .223 Rem (5.56mm US military), 7.62x39 (Russian military), .308 Win (7.62x51 US military) and the .30-06 (7.62x62 US military)… plus, of course, 12 and 20ga shotshells having inherited my father’s old shotshell press.
Anyway, the bench and all my presses have been put away for the last 8 or so years… other things, children, house, sailboat, etc., etc. … and, well, in the last 3 years, EvE… had preempted the time I used to spend on this most eminently satisfying (and highly cost effective) of hobbies…
But, the one and only constant in any ‘verse is change. You see we have a second house, a mother-in-law cottage or guest-house, on the same plot as my main house… just 50 ft catty-cornered off my front porch. We have rented it out for past 13 years but this year we have decided not to rent it anymore… and I could not be happier. While I dint mind the extra income, no not at all, I was never really happy with having ‘other’ people sharing my space… I’m a country boy at heart, grew up on a 300+ acre farm where our closest neighbor was a mile away (and kin)… Where we live now the closest house is almost a half mile straight through the woods and approx. 3/4 mile by car… so having other people sharing my yard and driveway… well, it has always irked me a bit extra income or no.
Fly wreckless and see you on the Range =/|)=
PS BTW the pic is, strangely enough, not my loading bench… It is a setup I have used for loading at the range or on a varmint hunt… I’m still setting up my new loading/smithing/workbench area over at my newly renamed ‘Shop’, but once I got bit by the bug to reload I broke out all the equipment, cleaned and oiled it all up and setup on my bar in the house (causing wife aggro levels to go to MAGENTA and rising)… but you get the idea… =]
For them as might be interested, in the above pic I have just started loading a 50 round batch of .38 Special. 50 primed cases are in the tray, the powder measure is directly over the tray, and loading 158 grain lead round nose bullets… There are three bullets on the bench ready to seat on primed and charged cases… a completed round is in the tray and one just finished is in the press. Here I’m using my RCBS ‘Partner’ Single Stage press…
Later Ima go out back and bang bang some tin cans… =]
English people and American people have a lot in common, so much so that sometimes it feels like we pretty much share a culture.
ReplyDeleteNot with guns.
I've never heard of an English father and son having the same reverence and appreciation for guns. I mean we do have guns but they're tools for us, about as intrinsically exciting as a vacuum cleaner. When I did some shooting as a teenager the guns lived at the range, they were handled as if they were poisonous cobras and they were locked away with relief after practice.
I'm not saying one style or the other is better but it is interesting to read how deeply embedded in your life your guns are, how much you cherish them.
[You know I HAVE to respond, right?]
DeleteIt’s not that guns are “cherished”, really bad choice of wording there and a good indicator of why you, and so many people do not understand, or listen, when we talk about gun ownership and rights.
In order to understand it you have to first understand where it comes from. Britain and most if not all of Europe was ‘tamed’ and civilized in the age of the sword. By the time guns were becoming the primary form of individual weapon, prohibitive cost and the governments of Europe saw to it that their populace did not have ready access to firearms. Look to your own history, an armed populace was a direct threat to an unpopular government… Hell an unarmed populace was a threat, look at France. Piss off ‘the people’ enough and you had trouble.
Now, let’s look at America. America was settled AFTER the gun came of age. America was a huge untamed WILDERNESS inhabited by dangerous animals and human native’s who had absolutely no compunction about viciously fighting back against the encroachment of white settlers (and please if you think to go into the right or wrong of that, first look at how much raping and pillaging has taken place all across Europe before you go there). In the new world EVERY household faced risks that no European has faced as a normal course of daily life for hundreds of years. Gun ownership was a necessity for safety and livelihood. I have no idea if you could support a family anywhere in England at the time off of hunting and subsistence farming alone, but I doubt it… and I am sure that would be very hard, if not absolutely impossible today... not so in America, even today.
Life in America back then was DIFFERENT at a very basic level. Guns were accepted as a daily tool same as a plow or a horse. It was also our personal ownership of firearms that allowed us to instantly create and man the militias that eventually formed the first American Army and fought, and won, our freedom from foreign rule.
You can argue all you want that that was then and this is now, and I do agree the world is not the same world today as it was then… and it isn’t, but, personal ownership of firearms is still a cornerstone of our independence as a nation and as a people. It was deemed so important that it was written into our Constitution specifically as a safeguard against tyranny. Now, of course, our forefathers could not foresee the future anymore than we can today, but they felt it was important to state that individual gun ownership is a guaranteed RIGHT under the law of our land. And you can argue the meaning of militia all you want, but if you take the time to ‘read’ the Jefferson Papers and you will understand what he meant, and it wasn’t the Guard or the Standing Army… it was THE PEOPLE.
Now, as for me personally… I own farmland, woodland and undeveloped waterfront that has been passed down in my family since 1648 when my first ancestor (a Surveyor to the King and a Welshman) first came to America settled on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Balls Neck, Northumberland County on the Northern neck of Virginia. The land I inherited from my father in ’08 is the same land my family has lived, hunted, crabbed, farmed, oystered and raised their families on, as I am mine… and is the same land we have died on, and for, in both the Revolutionary and the Civil wars…
[to be cont...]
Generations of Blackwells, and our related families the Hardings, Balls and others, are buried there. We have hunted on this land for food and sport for ALL of those hundreds of years… my father taught me woodcraft, sailing, fishing, crabbing and oystering on that land and in those waters… as did his father and his father and on and on… So, unlike you, for me it IS a tradition and a RIGHT.
DeleteHunting, target shooting and reloading ammunition are also my hobbies… and in America we don’t create laws against what a person ‘might’ do… that is a core tenet of the basic idea of personal ‘freedom’… and as long as you don’t break the laws we do have, we have another right… the Pursuit of Happiness... and these hobbies bring me much satisfaction. I have been hunting and shooting and I have worked in firearms retail and as a licensed and permitted Private Investigator… and I have never shot anyone…
And before you bring up how many people are harmed by criminals using guns, you need to do some research and find out how many times guns are used in legal, needful and justified self defense every year in America… you might be surprised to find out the media doesn’t publish or report on ANY of those stories… they go against the modern liberal media’s agenda. Plus do a bit of research and find out how many people in Britain are stabbed every year, how many are beaten? I’ll gladly argue self defense rights with you… after you have ALL the facts, not just the slant the media puts on it.
Take, for instance just the wording used to report these types of crimes… “Gun Violence”… it’s a misnomer… a GUN can DO nothing on its own. The violence is ALWAYS done by a PERSON, a human being using a gun a knife, a club or even a brick for ill… that is the issue… and as for a gun making it ‘easy’ to kill…. Really? What do people who say that base “easy” on? Do they honestly believe shooting someone is EASY? Go into the woods and aim a rifle at a deer and pull the trigger and then tell me it’s EASY to kill, because it isn’t… I and every decent hunter knows that.
I understand and accept that hunting, killing an animal myself, is the same as the butchers who kill the thousands of cows to provide the millions of burgers McDonalds alone cooks and sells every year… The difference is I accept personal responsibility for what most modern civilized people won’t, providing ‘meat’ for my families table... and pulling a trigger on a human being is far far harder… and if it isn’t, then a gun is not needed… for that person, anything will do… that’s as true here in America as it is in Britain or France… or Afghanistan.
It’s not about guns… it’s about history, rights and tradition and the realities of life. Oh and one other thing... In America, I will defend, to the death, your right to disagree with me.
To any and all anti-gun people reading this... We need an anti-knife coalition NOW.
Deletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/world/knife-attack-at-chinese-train-station-leaves-28-dead-more-than-100-injured/2014/03/01/0b20ed8e-a195-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html
28 DEAD and more than 100 injured in knifeviolence. Yes it was a group of ten guys and not just one lone man, but that does nothing change the basic fact that It aint about GUNS or any weapon... it's about PEOPLE who are willing to commit murder.
A good read. I am looking forward to getting out and chasing a few ducks with my father in a few weeks time when the season opens up here. I also started going out hunting at around 8 - but we had plenty of opportunities on our doorstep. My son is 8 now and I haven't considered taking him out. The cost of living in the city with hours of travel time to get to the nears hunting grounds.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear that. I lost my dad to cancer in ’08, and TBH, it has been hard hunting without him. So many memories… ah well, it is the way of life is it not?
DeleteA good friend was over this weekend and we did get in some skeet shooting. He taught his son, 10, about wing shooting and (the never ending) lessons on gun safety, of course. And the young man did quite well… not only fired a 12ga for the very first time, and did it safely and properly, but he listened, took his time and did it right too… he actually hit his first 2 clays!
I understand fully about the time & costs… while I was raised on Balls Neck and own some of the family land there now, I have spent a lot of years in the metro Tidewater area… lived in Portsmouth, Va Beach & Richmond… and I have worked at various times in downtown Norfolk and Richmond among other places. But the place we have now is a dream. We named it ‘Erehwon Farm’… 5 acres in the middle of a 40 acre plot that itself is inside 200 acres of timberland… close enough (half hour to hour drive time) to several metro locations that job opportunities are good and deep enough in the country to feel safe and really at home. I could even hunt deer in my old horse pasture acreage right behind the main house, I haven’t yet, but I could… as it is we do quite a bit of target and skeet shooting.
Your comment reminds me that I need to rebrush the duck blind this year too… Hope you get out and get a bit of hunting in… and teach your son man, you will never regret it. My dad first took me in the woods at 6… and I could never say thank you enough.
My wife and I would prefer to move to a country farm – but we won’t move the kids from their school and friends. I spoke to my father last night and he was a bit morose about the season – most of the places we have hunted over the years are no longer available to us, closed, or this year have no water. The closest place I can hunt from home – about 2 hours away, also looks like it will be closed this season. I think I am going to have to scout out some new locations this year and buy some extra camping gear. Time to go further afield. I’ll drag my son along if I find locations that are not too heavily hunted.
DeleteI can't say I ever had a real 'downtown' address actually, but I have lived in the suburbs. I have resided most of my life in rural areas. And I know full well just how lucky I am to be a riparian landowner... believe me, I do and I am thankful and share my good fortune. Mt dads hunting buddies formed 'Club Blackwell' years ago, and they, among others, have written permission to hunt the land I, my brother and sister own. But I know finding land to hunt on for others is not easy...
ReplyDeleteI don't know where IRL you live, but if we ever see each other at Fan Fest or a meetup, we'll talk...
I'm down in Australia :)
DeleteWe have looked at buying land to hunt / camp on (and had the loan pre-approved and were visiting properties). We decided recently however with the job market being so poor here that it would be more prudent to hold off.
Our Duck season starts next weekend. I'll be hunting a location with my Old Man some 350km north. I spent half a day yesterday scouting a new place for me to hunt this season which is doable in a day trip. I have a second location the other side of the city to scout out during the season. I should hopefully get a few opportunities to stock the freezer.
OK... (1) dint know that and... (b) color me effin jealous!!! There are really only 4 places in the world I really want to travel to...
Delete(1) Moab Utah... I'm very into offroading... it's my other IRL hobby
(2) Wales/England... I'm of welsh extraction so...
(4) Japan... should be obvious
and
(5) Australia... again, obvious I feel