You Win Some....

.... you lose some, and sometimes you have a "Paul Christoforo" of a day (see bottom if you don't know who he is).

Sunday was a bad day both in and out of Eve Online for me. First of all it's the first working day of the week (Middle East) and I had to drive to the capital. So it was up at 5:30am, leave the house for 6am, two hours driving with mad drivers, 10 hours in the office and then another 2 hours of Death Race 2012 to get back home for around 8pm. Think of that drive as taking a Hulk to Tama or Amamake and then warping to each belt in turn.

A corp mail on Saturday had advertised a fleet starting at 7pm my time on Sunday. I thought I'd miss it, which was a shame as Super kills were mentioned (that's super capital kills, not just really super kills!). May be there was a chance I could jump into a stealth bomber and catch up?

In the end I logged on and the fleet was still forming! Result! Problem was wifey was cooking dinner. A "Puss in Boots" look to the wife got me my chilli con carne served at the computer desk. Double result!

May be something could be salvaged from today with a good fight! I jumped in my Abaddon with the 1400's (I don't do lasers, I like my guns manly) and thought I'd fallen lucky!

Anyway, we knew that some Russians had reinforced a large POS not far from us and used a rather nice fleet to do so in the first place. Therefore we thought that they'll be back to finish it off with a similar fleet.... and we'd pay them a visit.

99% of the time we do these things perfectly. Sometimes, they go "Paul". This one went "Paul". I'm not going into all the details, I don't want to reveal all our tactics now do I? However, it went something like...

The warp in got mixed up. I landed at the correct spot and quickly picked a Phoenix to point (someone had already called a Moros). Then I found myself being primaried by the enemy BS fleet. I broadcast for reps. Then I realized the logi's weren't there. In fact of the 30 or so of the fleet, I was one of a handful sat on top of the enemy dreadnaughts and their rather large support fleet of BS and BC's. The warps had gone very wrong. My part in the battle was as follows.

Yay I'm here.
Right! "Point on the Phoenix!"
Guys I'm being yellow boxed by their support fleet
/broadcast for reps
Er guys where is everyone? GUYS? GUYS????? OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU..................
/die

Anyway by the time the logi's, other BS and our cyno ships landed, my Abbaddon with the BIG GUNS was space trash and I was sat in my pod at a random planet. I went to burn back the six jumps to reship and listened to what was happening.

Our fleet finally got sorted and our newly jumped in triage carriers were struggling to keep up when more cyno's were lit. A second hostile fleet of Tengu's and Basilisks were dropped on us along with a Aeon supercarrier. Suddenly a trap had been sprung on our trap. The system had become decidedly Russian!

Now we were in trouble. Fighter-bombers were deployed and the enemy had superior numbers (100ish verses our less than 30) and better composition (BS like us but also T3's and plenty of logi and ECM).

I was nearly back in a new ship when the order to bail was given. I stopped on the last gate and pulled a U-turn. The cries of my fleet mates asking "Can anyone jam X, he has me pointed" ringing in my ears.

Oh well, at least it is a 135m ISK insurance payout for a platinum insured Abaddon currently!

Plus it could be worse. I could have done like Seismic Stan did the same night and thought I was sending a lovely text to my wife whilst I'm working away... only to use Twitter and give the whole of #tweetfleet a "wtf?" moment. By the way @freebooted, you know the Twitter app for Android saves Tweets, even the deleted ones? Look I'm reading it right now. Don't believe me?

Seismic Stan @Freebooted Nite baby, are you...... as if I would Stan ;)

Sometimes Eve Online lifts your spirits to the heavens. Other times its a case of...

Paul Christoforo - In case you were living under a virtual rock at the end of last year... Paul was CEO, owner and sole employee of Ocean Marketing. A company hired to market and deal with the orders of an after-market console controller add-on. The Avenger Controller was initially invented to help disabled people use the controllers of PS3's and XBox's. Anyway a guy who had ordered one emailed to find out what had happened to his order. The email chain got more and more laughable as the customer service got more and more "Faulty Towers". Mr Christiano played the "Big I am" and listed all the trade-shows and expo's he attended (after threatening to sell this guys order on eBay!). He mentioned PAX in his list as well as knowing the Mayor of Boston (WTF?). As the customer was a fan of Penny Arcade, he forwarded the email chain to them. Gabe replied back saying Ocean Marketing would not be getting a stand at any PAX after this dreadful customer service. Paul then, like the internet super genius he is, decide to attack Penny Arcade in his emails. Not only did he insult one of the most popular sites of its kind, he also threatened to run a smear campaign against them. Penny Arcade posted the email chain on their site for all to see. Then Paul found out what happens when you upset a few hundred thousand geeks...

http://penny-arcade.com/resources/just-wow1.html
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114975-Ocean-Marketings-Founder-Claims-Hes-Sorry
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114993-UPDATE-Ocean-Marketings-Former-Client-Disowns-Shady-PR-Firm
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114994-UPDATE-Ocean-Marketing-Attempts-To-Extort-Former-Client