200!

So this is my 200th blog post.  Ever.  Hopefully it will be my first that shows up on the new and improved EvE Blog Pack as I seem to not be on the RSS feed just yet.  Or it’s buggy.  Looks weird.  As opposed to Ripard Teg who seems to crank that out on a slow week.

I’m going to do two things.  One:  Talk a little about who I am as a person, not just an EvE player.  Two: List of my favorite blog posts.

Bet that weeded out a lot of people.

So first lets talk a bit about Dan.  Not Corelin.

I’m 31, an Army Vet of two trips to Iraq.  I’m an accounting student I grew up in Florida and choose to live in the midwest because FUCK Florida.  You have to live there to get it but the people in Iowa are just better than the people in Florida.  I help those I can, and yeah I’m a bit of a white knight.  At the same time I have little sympathy for those who put themselves in bad situations through a series of their own choices.   I am a soldier, I am a feminist, I am a supporter not of better treatment for some but of equal treatment for all.  Equality.  This is what brings me to EvE.  Here I have gained every advantage I currently have by my own efforts.  Here I can punish stupidity and still help people.  Here I get to judge, I get to do things that, while satisfying, I’d never want to do in the real world.  I PvP.  I’ve ganked, I’ve decced, I’ve blobbed, I’ve baited, and I’ve roamed.  I’ve also mined, missioned, plexed and incursioned.  I’m not an expert at any of these by the way, and my friends will tell you that they can be as surprised at the breadth of my knowledge as they are aghast at the shallowness of it at times.  I think with my heart as much as my head and it leads me to mistakes.  Some of those hurt few, and some hurt many.

This brings me, rather neatly, to my blog, which  has seen a few of these, from Mea Culpas to attacks on people who didn’t deserve them. It has seen me hit milestone after milestone as I struggled at first to find a voice and someone to listen to it; as I struggled to write coherently despite the best efforts of friends and editors; as I got my first really big breakthrough from Mord Fiddle, and then from Ripard Teg and started to build my own audience and following.  Now I’ve hit the last of my original goals.  As a newly-minted member of the EvE Blog Pack (Clinging on to the #30 spot) I feel victorious, humble, and proud all at once.  So before I look back at the last 200, I want to look forward to what I’ll be doing here.

I will be pushing to break down the hate speech, and rape culture that I feel is a very serious problem in EvE.  I won’t be preaching too much, but I will make an effort to call out blatantly stupid acts that hurt the playerbase.

I will make an effort to comment on the aspects of PvP as I see it, as a CEO of a somewhat successful PvP corp that has the worst luck EVER when it comes to alliances.

I will talk about leadership.  What it takes to lead, how to lead, how to manage, and how to measure your efforts and those of your pilots.

I will probably recruit other writers to talk about EvE and the issues I have in and out of game.

I will try to recapture some of the madcap episodes that so characterized my early times in Fancy Hats.

I will cover the big issues I know how.  I can talk about the CSM because I know what a good advisory board is.  I can’t talk much about Titans because as far as I know they are mobile stargates that can ruin my carrier FAST.

Now for the fun part.  My top 10 “Gud Poasts” I want you to read:

1.  Sexism in EvE Online – Fucking Read It!

2.  Assumption of Risk – This is part of EvE gents.

3.  Doomsday Clock – Sums up a lot of my coverage of events leading to last years layoffs

4.  Dread Empires Fall – Morbid Musings of a fun sightseeing trip.

5.  Things You Should Know About  Empire Wars Edition – Some not awful advice for budding PvPers getting their first wardec notice.  I’ll be hitting this one again soon 😀

6.  Alliances Cause Stupidity in Lab Rats – SCIENCE BITCHES!

7.  HOLY FLEURKING SCHNIT / It’s a Trap! – Because I’ve still killed so few caps that I blog about it 2 out of 3 times it has happened.  (Terribad Video for the other one HERE)

8.  MMO Players Bill of Rights – In light of Mittani Gate isn’t this MORE important?

9. How is You being Dumb MY Fault – Seriously if you are whining about an unfair fight you should have planned better.

10.  A Short History of Corelin – The whole thing.  I may have lied about 10 posts.  Things like that happen in EvE.

To those of you still reading at the bottom of this long, meandering, and only loosely connected to EvE post, thank you.  My readers are why I keep this blog up (that and my ego) and I thank you for the time you put into coming here.  I thank you for your comments which inspire me to write a better blog and to think and respond meaningfully.

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