And I thought there wouldn't be anything to post about...

Yesterday didn't seem like anything special, it was just the day before New Years Eve.  I had to work, and when I got home I ran to a friend's house for an hour.  By the time my wife got off work we decided to meet at home and go grab some dinner and hit up the grocery store for New Years Eve preparations.

My original intentions for EVE were the same as the night before, to log in and do something, anything at all really.  I'd been slacking so much lately that it was going to put me really behind.  I knew my tower had 25 days of fuel the last time I checked, but couldn't remember how long it had been since I had checked.  The previous night's plans never came to be and it looked like tonight's would end the same way.  So we headed out, hit up a local Coney Island restaurant, and did some shopping.  By the time we got home it was approaching 10pm, and I had to work in the morning, but I needed to at least log on and check my POS situation.

Since I always log out at a safe spot, I tend to scout first when I log in.  I don't like to warp to my POS and reveal my presence until I know what's going on around me.  So checking the fuel would have to wait.  Scanning down the hole was the first priority.  There were only 8 signatures, 2 were gas sites, 2 were pirate data sites and 4 were wormholes.  Besides my two statics there was a frigate hole to null and a K162 from w-space.  Not thinking much about that last one, I decided I'd huff some gas.

Starting with a Sizeable Perimeter Reservoir, I vacuumed up C84 until the rats spawned.  After clearing them I finished up the C84 and moved on to the C50.  Checking Eve-Central I was surprised to find C50 was worth more than C84 at the time.  I figured I'd hit up the other gas site next since it was a Barren Perimeter Reservoir and had a nice chunk of C50 in it.

So I moved to the next site and had extracted about 1000 of the 3000 units of C50 in it when d-scan got a hit.  A Heron was nearby, so I warped to the POS to minimize any chance of him knowing what I was up to.  Flipping to the Cheetah, I warped off to see what was up.  He was still on scan, but no probes.  Then all of the sudden it hit me, "hey dumbass, that K162 could be a Shattered Wormhole."  Figuring the Heron could entertain himself, I warped to the hole and jumped through.  Jackpot!  It led to J010000 which was indeed a Shattered Wormhole.

I was excited but also annoyed, it was getting later and I hadn't planned to stay up this late.  With the next night being New Years Eve I needed to get some rest so I could actually stay awake for that.  Popping up the probe scanner, there it was... an ice field.  I guess sleep can wait.

Before I dove into that I wanted to know about this "Epicenter" thing that showed up on the overview.  I warped to it at range and took a screenshot of it, but I had more pressing things to deal with so I moved on.  While warping to the ice field I wondered if I'd actually be able to pull off mining some ice.  After landing I found the field was huge, tons of ice rocks in a long line.  It's been a long time since I've been in an ice field but this felt bigger than anything I'd seen.

At first I thought I was out of luck, I didn't see any Glacial Mass, but after finding all the other kinds of racial ice I knew it had to be there too.  It was, and it was staring me right in the face.  I bookmarked one of the giant ice cubes and hit d-scan.  A Mobile Depot showed up, that could mean trouble.  I decided to warp around the system and figure out if anybody else was there.

By some crazy chance of luck the first planet I warped to was planet 5. There was something on the overview but it wasn't the depot.  I had to do a double take, but it was real.  There was Sukuuvestaa Heron sitting there uncloaked, not moving.  It was about 80km away and I figured it was a long shot but I slow boated over to about 14km and bookmarked the spot.  Frantically I warped back to my wormhole entrance, which luckily was out of scan range from the planet.  A quick warp to the POS and I was in my Claw, headed back to J010000.

I was beginning to think the guy was AFK or really engrossed in probing.  I landed on grid and he still hadn't moved.  I covered the 5km to scram range in an instant and he popped pretty quickly.  Somewhere between the moment he popped and the moment his pod followed suit, he convo'd me.  I rejected it out of habit, plus I had already decided to pod him so there was no point in chatting.

I've been on the fence about how I would handle podding people in wormholes.  Not podding people as a rule wouldn't save my pod from being crushed, but it still felt like the right way to handle things.  But tonight I wanted to mine ice and I couldn't have any stragglers kicking around, so in the half second it took to lock his pod I decided to send him home.

Moments later I got an EveMail from him titled "Ruthless" and stating "That was my only ship."  I responded with "I'd suggest being cloaked the next time you are trying to probe."  He didn't seem that upset, there was a smiley emoticon in the mail so I figure he took it well enough.

I bounced around the system real quick and since it looked clear I headed back for the Procurer.  As I landed in the ice field and hit d-scan, up popped a Malediction.  I knew these shattered holes would be high-traffic, but it was still really bad timing.  With a sigh I headed back to my wormhole, I wasn't going to take the chance that the Interceptor was alone.

Grudgingly I got back into the Cheetah.  The clock was ticking and I was up way later than I wanted to be.  But I headed back to the shattered hole where I bounced the outer planets looking for anything concerning.  I found the Mobile Depot at planet 10, it was reinforced with 11 hours left on it.  The Malediction was nowhere to be seen.  Some probes had shown up at first but now everything was quiet.  Deciding to tempt fate once again, I headed back to swap into the Procurer.

This time things went smoother.  I sat in the ice field, pulling down a block every 1m 18s.  I started looking up refine amounts, calculating how many days of fuel I was getting per cycle and all that.  I found myself getting a little lazy with d-scan and tried to pick up the pace.

The frequency with which you click d-scan is very important.  Even a one second delay can mean the difference between getting caught or not.  This importance was demonstrated to me moments later when a Heretic showed up on scan.  My brain said "Interceptor" again, even though it wasn't, but I reacted correctly anyway, immediately warping out of the site.  The Heretic landed and dropped a warp disruption bubble just as I was accelerating into warp.  I had escaped, but I wasn't home yet.

When I brought the Procurer into the shattered hole I had made a few inline safes on the way from my entrance to the ice field.  I was in warp to one of those because it was the fastest thing I could click to warp to.  When I landed, in scan range from the exit, nothing was on scan.  I proceeded to warp to the exit and just as I got into warp the Heretic was on scan again.  I landed on the exit, he landed on grid, I jumped, he followed a few seconds later.  He couldn't have missed me by any less the first time and he couldn't have caught me by any less this time.  He popped two bubbles and I was stuck, so I committed to the fight.

My choice of the Procurer suddenly seemed prescient.  The nice tank and drone bonuses would give me a shot.  I still didn't know if he had friends on the way, so I started slowboating out of the bubble while locking him up and sending my Warrior II's to greet him.  He didn't appreciate their greeting, his shield was dropping way faster than mine and I was just sitting passive with an active tank on standby.  As he slid into armor he appeared to be de-aggressing, but this was a wormhole, that wouldn't make any sense.  It turned out he had just switched to shooting my drones, and got one low into armor and bleeding some hull before he gave up and left.  I think he jumped out, I was more concerned with surviving at that point to care.  A few seconds later I reached the edge of the bubble, and warped to the POS.

It was nearly 1am, I was tired and simultaneously pumped with adrenaline.  I also had a combat timer to worry about, but I wanted to go to bed.  This final adventure had netted me 8 blocks of Smooth Glacial Mass, which is only a little more than one day worth of fuel products, but overall the night was a raging success.  Not forgetting my original goal I did remember to check the POS fuel, 21 days remaining.  Stocking up will have to be a goal for next week.

After waiting out the combat timer I safepotted and logged.  Sleep didn't come as quickly as I wanted, the adrenaline took a while to disperse.  But I woke up okay this morning so it could be worse.

Have a Happy New Year and don't forget to click d-scan, possibly more often than you already are.