Long Live Bob!

I thought this would be a good weekend for the tear down, but somehow I found myself sitting at my desk eating dinner on Sunday, my POS still up with all of its defenses, and the SMA and Ammo Array still online.  Friday night my family attended a fundraiser for a friend of my son's who was diagnosed with cancer.  We stayed fairly late and crashed when we got home.  Saturday I was supposed to work from home but we ended up being lazy, and I watched Gone Girl and Divergent with my wife. On Sunday I did the work that I was supposed to do on Saturday, leaving me with some free time while I was eating dinner, so I decided to log in and make some progress.

First off I wasn't alone, there was an Astero and some probes on scan when I logged in.  I was already in the Prowler, having stashed my Cheetah in the Orca the week before.  After warping to a safe that is on-grid with the POS, I started doing warp dives to the batteries that were outside the shields.  First were the guns, emptying them of ammo before offlining and unanchoring them.  Then the Energy Neut and some ECM batteries.  While I was doing this, the Astero disappeared from scan and a Venture took it's place.  The name sounded like bait, but you never can tell, I wasn't going to be messing with it anyway.

At this point there were three things left outside the shields, a Warp Disruptor and two ECM batteries, one of which was clustered with the Warp Disruptor.  I hit that cluster up next, and just as I had both batteries in my cargo hold, a Buzzard appeared on the overview.  I tried to cloak but he was already locking me up.  Burning for the POS shield, I hit the MWD but he had already landed a scram.  I was going to have to slowboat back into the shields at ~300 m/s.  The Buzzard wasn't doing any damage but a Sabre had just appeared on scan.  He landed and started shooting, getting through my shields and shaving just a touch of armor before I slid past the edge of the POS shield and their locks dropped.

Both pilots were members of Isogen 5, but not names I was familiar with from the forums.  I wondered for a moment if they had read my blog and were watching for me to move out.  But as time went by it appeared that these two may have just been in my wormhole by chance.  Shortly after our encounter, both pilots convo'd me.  They were asking for 200m ISK to leave and roll the connection so I would be assured they were gone.  I thought about it for a moment, that was roughly the combined cost of the ship I was in and the tower I was going to scoop.  They had given me 10 minutes to think it over.  I decided to pass on the offer but didn't have anything witty to say in response, so I logged off.

Knowing these pilots were part of a capable organization, I wondered if they'd reinforce the POS.  I had enough fuel left in it to deal with that situation, but it would complicate things.  I monitored my EVEMail for the rest of the evening but no structure notifications ever came.  For whatever reason, the only time I ever get Corp Hangar Rental Bills is when I'm simultaneously worried about my POS being shot at.  This night was no different, the bill came through and spiked my heart rate for a moment before I realized what it was.  It wasn't the first time this had happened, it's just a strange irony I keep running into.

I spent the rest of the evening watching Heroes with my wife, she had stumbled upon the series on Netflix, saving me the trouble of talking her into watching it.  We watched a few episodes together, then she went to bed and I got caught up to where she had gotten without me.  I figured I'd finish up the POS stuff the next night and so I headed to bed too.

The next morning my wife had to wake up at 5:00am, which meant I was going to be awake at that time too.  Falling back asleep doesn't always happen and since I had to move my car at 6:00am so she could leave, I laid there and thought about what was left to do.  I figured I would have time to make some progress right after she left, right before downtime.  As I walked back in just after 6:00am I headed downstairs to the computer room to find that EVE was down.  I could have sworn downtime was at 7:00am, maybe I didn't pay attention when Daylight Savings Time changed.  Anyway it was back up pretty quick and I logged in to get to work.

With one ECM battery left outside the shields and five hardeners inside, there wasn't much left to do.  I bounced and grabbed the ECM battery right away, then worked on the hardeners.  Then logged off to grab my secondary alt and use her to log off in the Drake.  With that done I switched to my primary alt and got the Orca loaded up.  Space was tight, tighter than I thought it would be.  All my extra Strontium had to go overboard, and a few Cap Boosters, but that was only a few million ISK worth of stuff.  One Magnate didn't fit in the Orca's Ship Maintenance Bay, so I ejected that too.  With everything else in place, I scooped the Ship Maintenance Array and Ammo Assembly Array, and warped the Orca to a safe spot.  Once it was logged off, all that remained was grabbing the POS in the Prowler.

The time to unanchor a small POS is 15 minutes and that was exactly what I had left before I had to wake up my youngest son for school.  Figuring "what the heck" I pulled the remaining fuel, offlined the tower and started it unanchoring.  A quick warp back to the on-grid safe allowed me to watch the timer tick down.  I ran off and got my son's breakfast ready and started waking him up, arriving back at the computer with 1 minute to go.  As the final seconds ticked down, I warped to the tower, scooped it, and cloaked.  Then I warped to a safe just to be sure I was clear.  With everything complete, I logged off, the wormhole adventure now officially on pause.  The tower was up for nearly 100 days, almost exactly in fact.  It was within 6 hours of that when I took it down.

The only signs left now are a can and a Magnate, the can will fade quickly, but the ship will remain until it's destroyed or despawns (after 30 days I think).  The name of the ship: Long Live Bob

o/

Fly safe and thanks for reading.