I am Joe Blog’s Left Ventricle

I’ve created a new site purely for tech/nerdy posts in the future. It will be completely separate - I wont even link the two.

Three recent posts have been moved there.

It was a bit difficult for me - but it makes sense. People looking to read tech articles just aren’t interested in two years of random musings about every other topic under the sun.  Better yet, I can actually put my name on the new blog, and not worry about having to explain my views on underage girls and monogamy to a future employer during an interview.

On the one hand that feels a little bit like I’m not standing behind my statements. On the other it feels like just not giving the other team ammo. Besides, who am I kidding here?

a) my name isn’t on this blog in the first place - at what point did I think I started hiding?

b) if someone WANTS to dig up the dirt on me, they’ll find this place regardless. If they dig that hard though, I’m happy to discuss it with them. Obviously they have something to say.

Vanguard is very pleasing on the eye, fun and relaxing to play, almost always rewarding, everybody’s nice… but it’s not overly intellectually stimulating. The most complicated strategy I’ve yet formed goes a little like “as a platemail wearing character, I’m going to go through something like five or six suits of armour before I hit level 50, at which point I’ll probably STILL be looking to upgrade my armour. So I’ll become an armoursmith!” Duh.

Eve is a strategic masterpiece where you can form a 12-month strategy and reap the rewards. Every decision involves maths, tactics, risk and rationalism. I built a small empire of three starbases moon-mining precious minerals to achieve my goals. But it’s cruel, it’s stressful, and it’s full of assholes. You can lose months of what you’ve been playing towards with one silly mistake. Those three starbases? One of them has been destroyed and the moon taken over by pirates already. Meanwhile, with its completely realistic market, Eve is punishing me doubly for my efforts - the price of Technetium is falling. I guess like every other starbase owner out there, I rushed to find moons with these rarer minerals when their prices skyrocketed earlier in the year - and now supply has caught up with demand and the price has gone into freefall. It will probably hit rock bottom and stay there - the motivation to tear down your starbases and abandon your moons just isn’t there. A risky enterprise, hours of fucking around, for no gain whatsoever - except you can finally stop refuelling the damned things.

In Eve, I’ve finally got myself a Carrier. Now I’m a strategic force, ready to enter Zero space with my alliance and help them push our enemies out. The carrier took half a billion isk to build and over a billion in training costs to fly it. That represents months and months of play just to get that much money up, even if the training didn’t take that long in the first place - and it does. I haven’t named the fucking thing yet, it’s still in kit form in a hangar waiting for me to get the pilot over to it - through vicious space infested with our enemies. The least stressful way of doing so is to ship a clone out there and commit suicide. I am seriously considering doing exactly that.

In Vanguard, I just bought myself a pretty little sloop. Her hull is forest green, so I named her the Spirit of the Woods. If I walk near a river or beach and right click the title deeds to the ship in my inventory, the ship appears. If I hit U, I appear on her decks, and if I hit U again standing behind the wheel I can control the ship with the arrow keys. The captain’s training program consisted of typing “how the fuck do I control my ship? :)” into guild chat.

Meanwhile, I currently have two jobs at work. I’ve been promoted, but there’s really nobody to take over my old role. So I’m trying to be a manager (succeeding, for the most part… I think) while still halfassed being a Systems Administrator at the same time. My replacement’s hired but wont start until Nov 12 - at the earliest - he now wants to start as late as Nov 29. Up to seven weeks of shit are ahead therefore - the combined stress load of learning a _completely_ new job on the fly and still trying to do my old one without anywhere near enough time to do it. Last week was the most stressful I remember - I’m pretty sure I’ve got symptoms of high blood pressure.

So what game do I find myself more drawn to? Vanguard… by the time I get home from work these days, if I feel up to looking at a screen at all, I tend to shy away from the high stress option.

Still… there’s a hangar out there with a million tons of metal in it waiting for me…