No More Gaming

I will keep this short and sweet (actually it's pretty long). Gaming for me was an addiction. A full blown addiction. Every moment of my day was spent thinking about games. All of my activities were planned with gaming in mind.

When I would go out on the weekend with my wife, I would plan in my head "OK 2 hours at the beach/shopping with my wife and I can be home by noon and game for at least 10 hours". It was affecting my relationship with everyone, especially my wife. One day, I decided to make a change.

As a Christian, I have always gone to church and done the whole "good guy" thing by playing on the worship team and faithfully attending Wednesday evening and Sunday morning services but, it was all just an act. I thought by going through the motions, I was fulfilling my duties however, a relationship with God is not a duty; it's a privilege.

One day while driving to my crappy job (which I thought was a good job because it was 10 hours a week, thus allowing me maximum game time), I got fed up with myself. I began to pray "God, I am so ashamed of my life. I have been married 5 years and we are no better off than we were on day 1. In fact we are worse. I am willing to do whatever it takes to have a personal relationship with you and get my life straightened out".

Of course, God pointed me to the one obstacle remaining between us; my gaming. The change didn't happen immediately. You should know, I am a VERY stubborn person. My mother used to actually lecture me in properly arguing my point when I was a kid. While some kids practiced their ABCs on the way to school, we practiced words like "misinterpretation" or "unrelenting". My mother wanted me to be verbally and intellectually capable and perhaps one day become a lawyer or corporate big whig. This practice gave me a wonderfully diverse vocabulary but also served to give me a attitude of "I'm smarter than everyone else".

Back to my story. It was another month before I finally made any noticeable change. In fact it got worse before things got better. 2 weeks after I had made that life changing prayer, I got a job for a company called Citrix (an AWESOME place to work). It was a fulltime job making quite a bit more per hour than my previous job. I figured "well the money is good and I can buy more games with it!" I quickly discovered that a fulltime job greatly impedes your gaming life. Now with 40 hours of work, I was trying to juggle gaming, work, and a wife together (with gaming taking up the majority of my home time).

One night, as I was "raiding" in a game called DC Universe Online, we had guests over at our house. I was so into my gaming, I didn't even acknowledge them the entire time they were there and my wife was forced to do all the entertaining. As I sat there and noticed the visible disappointment on there faces, I thought to myself, "what am I doing?" It was right there that I finally made the ultimate decision. I would give up gaming...completely.

With me, there are NO levels. I either commit myself to something completely or I don't. There was no "weening" of of gaming. I had to either quit completely or not at all. I chose to quit. The next day, I sent out an email to my closer friends online informing them that I would never return. Of course, I heard the usual "just game less" lines from them but I knew that I had to stop because there is no gaming less for me. Within 24 hours, my website was given to someone else, my account were closed down, and I had placed all my games (all 500 or so) up on the internet for sale.

That was 2 months ago. I am happy to say, I have no relapsed, my relationship with my wife has improved more in 2 months than in our entire marriage, I am teaching a class at my church on discipleship, and I am a month away from completely paying off ALL our debt. This entire time, it was my gaming that was standing between myself and God. Gaming was my idol. It was more important to me than God. Therefore it WAS my god. It says in the 10 commandments that we can't have any other gods. Well I am happy to say, I don't anymore. Thank you God for being so patient with me.

GOODBYE GAMING! HELLO REAL LIFE!

I'm a Real Pirate

It has been forever since I posted but now that this works in the in game browser, Ill do what I can do post more often.

Here is my abridged history of the past year.

Joined SCUM

Moved to Placid Region with MOD (Scum Executor Corp)

Lived there and killed MANY people

Got my sec back up to run the MOD training corp in highsec.

Did some highsec griefing with the training corp.

Switched over to Militia and had some fun there.

Disbanded training corp and rejoined MOD

Left MOD for a more american timezone corp within the alliance called Inferno Legions.

So now that you are caught up, I am living in Metropolis lowsec yarring it up. We are quickly becoming one of the primary powers of this area at 330 players in our alliance and growing daily.

I have been back to full time pvp and also working on my skills with the pilgrim. I enjoy cloaking and soloing the unsuspecting noob.

Joining Soldiers of Solitude

Our small band of misfits has joined a small alliance of misfits. The alliance is a mix of mission runners and pvpers. I have already led a few bands into lowsec against Dark Solar Empire. I'm not sure why but it seems none of them ever want to fight. Not a good attitude to have if you live in lowsec....

Anyhow, night 1 was useless. We roamed Mai area in Retribution, Incursus, Merlin, and Rifter. We were obviously asking to get popped and even then we couldn't get a fight. Aside from my Retribution, we had crap dps.

Night 2 was much more successful. With the same crew, we went to Saikkamon area and after an hour of not being able to goad any Dark Solar folks out, we caught a 15 day old character in an ice belt with his Vexor. He was able to warp out before Brandkuiken could lock him down. Bummed, we hung around the belt for a bit and lo and behold, he came back! Apparently he had actually been looking for a fight and was already mid warp when we first warped in. The fight started and the Vexor focused his drones and fire on Brand in his "Hero Rifter" as we have come to call it. The Vex was sporting some major armor for a ship in his class and I had to pop on weapon overload to finish him quickly.

The damage to my weapons and energy transfer came out to about 138k isk. The funny thing is, the loot the Vex dropped came out out a cut of 140k isk for me haha. Looks like I am 2k richer and 1 more kill. Probly not worth the big security drop but still fun. Last night was supposed to be Dessy raid night but I was pooped and went to bed at 9:00. Hopefully tonight we can catch some more folks off guard.
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=7147207

On the Road Again....errr Warpath Rather

I haven't posted in a while. Mainly because I figured nobody reads these but apparently they do!

To summarize the past month or 2, myself and a few other friends reformed the Gorgonites. Just like in the old days, we were back to griefing corps and wardeccing others much larger than ourselves. For about a month, we were doing fairly well with about 3 billion in damages and only a few hundred million in losses. As Battlecruiser 5 rolled around, I was looking at 20+ days of training so I wasn't in game as much and we bled off most of our members minus the original 2 founders. I don't blame them I suppose. The leader has to be the most hardcore and preasent member and I was not.

Either way, that hasnt stopped us from more Schinanigans (wow I spelled it right the first time without the spell checker getting on my case). Today beginds a war vs a 20 man and 12 man corp vs our 3. We are fielding me in a Baddon, Cj in his RR Domi, and Brand in his little "Hero" rifter. We call it that because he withstood 3 drakes and 3 ravens in that little thing. Anyhow, I will be posting more soon as the fights continue.

Going For The Ultimate Gank

Well, all I am missing for a good gank is weapon overloading. I'm training energy mangement to 5 now (13 days bleh). Once I finish that, I can work my way to Thermodynamics 4 thus allowing me to complete a good pvp baddon setup. Once I can use overload, Ill move on to finishing out T2 large lasers and more damage skills like controleld bursts. Ahhh EVE is a game for the patient man.

Yay Heavy Dictors!

I got heavy interdictors finally today. I am days from interceptors and logistic ships but sadly I am going to have to put a week of training into torpedoes thanks to a new update by ccp that gives torpedo bonuses to stealth bombers rather than cruise missiles. I'm not too bummed though as Stealth Bombers are great ships for wormhole space. Fast, powerful, and stealthy.

Missioning in my Baddon

Oh what has the world come to. I am wasting a beautiful Abaddon on missions. Oh well, I fitted it with trimarks in case we ever get some pvp action. Until then, it serves as a great hp mission tank. Back to running missions in Amarr space. I could use the standings as could many of my corp members. The money isn't half bad either :)