Many losses in EVE Online happen not because we didn't know better, but because we were impatient or rushing to get something done. This game has so much busy work in between the things we actually like to do whether it's mission running, combat sites, PVP, mining, or whatever. It's just one thing after another. This is the story of how I lost a lot of loot because I was too impatient to call it a day and wait for the right connection.

This was in my farm and let me tell you that at the time I really proud of my farm. For those who don't know, a farm is a wormhole system you use purely for making money. It's common among high-class wormholers to have a farm hole for making money. I had wrapped up running sites in my farm and I was looking to sell my blue loot. The problem was that I could not find a connection to kspace. I rolled my static several times and I just couldn't get a good connection. I need a Jita, Amarr, or anywhere where I could offload this blue loot but nothing was coming up.

Just as I was about to call it a day and leave it for another time, I found a Thera connection. Thera is so dangerous it's an absurd amount of risk to haul something like 5b ISK worth through there. There's any number of things that could go wrong. Someone could put up a drag bubble, the connection might die before I get to it, there might be a camp, or some combination of all of that resulting in me losing my DST full of goodies.

But holy shit was I desperate... I had been rolling for almost two hours just trying to get a good connection and I was having the worst luck a person could have. This Thera felt like a lifeline after all that. I had a nullifier to get through bubbles, I had a warp core stabilizer which meant it would take two scrams, four points, or some combination equally four warp disruption to keep my ship from warping... I could do this. I talked myself into it. I told myself this was doable and the risk was acceptable.

I jumped into Thera. Nobody on my side and nothing on dscan. Ok, just MWD-cloak trick this and pop the nullifier and... Uh-oh, did I hit the nullifier before I entered warp or after? If it was after then the nullifier won't do a lick of good. Thera is something like 200+ AUs across. That's a long time to sweat it out as I try to remember whether I hit nullifier at the right time. I start to land and my worst fears are waiting for me. It's a four person camp on the wormhole with a bubble to stop ships short of reaching the hole. It's not a great camp, but it's enough. This is when I learn that I must have hit the nullifier after entering warp. I've landed on the bubble. There's about 16km between me and that damn hole. Maybe I can make it? Overheat the MWD and pray. Pray to Thor for protection. Pray to Odin for strength and courage against impossible odds. Pray to Tyr for the sheer gall I had to even try. Pray to Loki for a little cosmic shenanigans....

But it was not on the gods to save me. I put myself in this situation. It took all of 45 seconds for them to whittle me down and all that loot went up in smoke. They podded me to Jita for good measure. How had I been so foolish? How did I talk myself into that? It was stupid. I teach classes at EVE University and tell people all the time how dangerous Thera is and not take valuable stuff through Thera and... and... It's gone. All my work for the last week and half or so is gone. Down the drain in an act of self-delusion and hubris. RIP me.

For the new players, the basics:

I think something that's important for a CSM representative is that they understand or have at least tried to conceptualize CCPs perspective and motives for what they do. I don't think a CSM rep can speak to CCP effectively if they can't imagine how what is said will be understand by developers. Even better? Being able to communicate player wants and needs through translation. What I mean by that is: players don't always know how to communicate what they actually want. When players say they want more ships, what are they really saying? Do they want more ships because they want a greater variety of ships? Do they want more ships because our current ships are too expensive and new ships would drive down the price of old ships? Do they want new ships because our current ships of the line need a balance rework to make them fun to fly again?

Sometimes players ask for things they don't actually want. They ask for what's easiest to ask for, but not always the easiest to fulfill nor does it actually meet the need the players have identified. We need a CSM representative who gets this, either explicitly understand how this happens or intuitively picks up on the gap between what players say and what players mean.

My top choices are currently Dujek Oneye and DutchGunner.

Aggress (verb): to engage DPS, tackle, and other EWAR modules on a target

Aggro (noun): usually referring to incoming damage from hostiles, often times in PVE situations where the NPCs all focus fire one character on grid.

De-aggress (verb): to disengage all DPS, tackle, and other EWAR modules on a target

Heat (verb): refers to overloading modules for the increased performance

Heat damage (noun): the damage incurred by overloading modules for any extended period of time

StratOp (noun): short for "Strategic Operation" is corporation or alliance-wide fleet to achieve an objective

Split guns (verb): to group guns into two or more distinct groups so they can be fired separately, usually for managing heat or harassing multiple targets at once

Waterboard (verb): to tackle, bubble, or otherwise hold a target in place without any intention of killing them or not killing them any time soon

I'd like to correct one definition.

CTA (noun): short for "Call to Arms" is an all-hands-on-deck mandatory fleet action for an alliance to accomplish an objective. These rare fleet actions are often used in dire circumstances where key structures at risk.

I would like to see the Stratios buffed so that it's on par with T3Cs. The Stratios used to be the go-to for folks who had just lost a T3C and had to retrain a skill, but since they removed the "lose skillpoints if you lose a T3C" thing from the game, the Stratios has continued to lag behind.

I'd also like to see the Legion and Proteus receive a buff specifically to their logi configuration. The logi Loki is not only viable, but wildly popular in shield brawls in jspace. I'd like to see the Legion and Proteus get buffed to make them equally viable as armor logi (they currently die too fast).

Alright, I think technically that's three but I'm going to do one more and we'll just call it a bonus: I'd like jams to receive a buff, specifically I'd like to see ECM become a script so that you have a empty ECM module that can be applied on any ship the way an multispectrum ECM module would, but if you put in the Radar/Yellow script now you've got the full bonus applied to Radar ECM. No other EWAR of any kind works like ECM and I think it makes ECM less viable in a fight.

This is the first Azariel kill in New Eden. It was also my first titan kill. Sadly, I had to use a low-SP alt as my main was far away.

When I "won EVE" five years ago, I thought I was done with EVE Online forever. There are so many incredible games out there and that's not even getting into my own game design work which has helped raise millions for causes around the world. But about two years ago I was playing No Man's Sky which is a very fun game and felt something was missing. There's very little risk involved. Sure, you can lose a ship, but in the later stages of the game the NPC enemies are just no match for your S-tier ship with entirely S-tier ship parts. I tried playing Elite Dangerous and while I enjoyed the community (they have an Out of Gas rescue service that reminded me of EVE Scout Rescue), the PVP in that game was garbage and there was a massive amount of grind that just wasn't even a tiny bit fun. The nail in the coffin for me on Elite Dangerous was when I learned that you couldn't gank hauling ships because they could just log out instantly (I'm told this has since been made a big no-no).

I tried playing a variety of space flight simulator-type games: Chorvs (Chorus) was a beautiful game but incredibly boring after about an hour. I tried Rebel Galaxy which felt like it was trying to be EVE Online but for single player? It was kinda cool, but the graphics were horribly dated and reminded of EVE Online circa 2005. It was also just really boring after a few hours. In fact, I realized that Rebel Galaxy was essentially everything I hate in EVE Online: PVE content. I had an EVE Online-shaped hole in my heart, but alas I was not an EVE Online player anymore. Do you know what I missed most? Space trucking. I have both European and American Trucking Simulator and I love them both, but those are chill games about patience and good vibes while trying to make a living as an independent trucker. I tried diving back into Star Trek Online since I, a) love Star Trek, and b) have a lifetime subscription for the game and sadly I just couldn’t get into it. All the people I had played that game with had moved on from the game or were unreachable.

The thing that I needed, the thing that made EVE Online exciting and fun was how dangerous it was to do space trucking. At any time, on any given route I could encounter an enterprising ganker who has it in their brain to pop my ship. Sure, if that happened I would be pretty bummed, but the risk made every successful run that much more thrilling. Without the threat of losing my ship, even in “safe” places like highsec, hauling stuff around New Eden would be the most boring activity you could dream up. It is precisely one of the things that separates EVE Online from other MMOs, the fact that PVP can happen anywhere at any time that gives it an edge.

This song is sampling a Tunisian folk song, "Sidi Mansour." I only learned about Karpe yesterday, but this song just makes me feel so joyful. Kinda hard to listen to and not want to jump out of your seat at and throw your hands up. This specific song is the name of a URL for a foundation they set up to raise money for asylum seekers and refugees around the world.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket

This show is categorized as a shonen mecha anime meaning that it was intended for boys (i.e. children) and yet I think this show as with most of Gundam has huge appeal to adults, not just because mecha anime is cool to watch but because of what Gundam has to say about the human cost of war. War in the Pocket does a spectacular job of giving viewers that message in a tight six episodes and because it is an original video animation (OVA), it has higher quality production values than your average syndicated anime.